Virtual Judging

Resources for Virtual Judges

Teams always need judges for speech and debate tournaments. Without enough judges, teams pay penalty fees and tournaments are more challenging to run. If you have a child involved with speech and debate, the South Carolina Forensic Coaches Association encourages you to attend a tournament and judge.

Virtual Tournaments

Prior to the pandemic, tournaments were already in the process of going paperless, meaning judging was done electronically as opposed to using paper ballots. Most tournaments use software called Tabroom, though a few (mostly college-hosted tournaments) use SpeechWire.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many tournaments moved online. Tools such as classrooms.cloud, Zoom, Google Meet and other technologies allowed rounds to proceed either via video uploads or in virtual online classrooms.

These capabilities proved invaluable during the pandemic, and had the benefit of rapidly advancing the movement to paperless ballots. For virtual tournaments, there are some hardware considerations:

Girl on computer screen in a virtual conference.

  • Use a laptop or desktop Mac or PC to judge. Phones and tablets do not work very well — if at all. You must have sound (speakers, microphone) and a camera to judge, as you will need to communicate with the competitors and they will need to be able to see you. Tournament day is not the day to have problems, so check your configuration beforehand.

  • Make sure your Mac or PC is up to date. We recommend running software updates beforehand, so you are not unintentionally interrupted during a tournament with the dreaded “Restart your PC now” message! This can also help ensure everything works optimally.

  • NSDA Campus is how most online tournaments create virtual classrooms. To use NSDA Campus, a PC or Mac with Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge web browser is required. Both browsers are available for Mac and PC. You cannot use Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer. Before tournament day, test your system on the NSDA Campus test site. Results with Chromebooks may vary; test beforehand. If you cannot access NSDA Campus, your firewall may be blocking you. This is common if you are trying to compete or judge from a school facility. Read our “Accessing NSDA Campus” document (PDF).

  • Zoom is often used for utility rooms or team rooms. We recommend having the latest version of Zoom on your Mac or PC.