the judging experience
As a competitive event judge, you’ll sit across the from students as they present their ideas and solutions to real-world business problems. Students have prepared all year and look forward to this moment as they work to earn a spot at the next level of competition. Students will utilize all of the presentation, professional development, and critical thinking skills they’ve learned over the year, as well as the knowledge they’ve gained in their career cluster to present truly innovative ideas.
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DECA has 50 competitive events that students compete in. Our competitive events are split into role play events and prepared presentation events.
In ROLE PLAY events, the judge interacts with the student(s) in a business scenario. In individual events, the students have 10 minutes to review the scenario, and in team events, they have 30 minutes to review the scenario. You will evaluate their solution to a problem presented in the scenario based on a provided rubric.
In PREPARED PRESENTATION events, the judge listens to students present projects that they have been working on throughout the school year. These presentations range from researching operations in an existing business, presenting a growth plan for a business they already own, and many more topics. These prepared events also present an opportunity for virtual evaluations. Some of the events require the competitors to write a paper as well. Virtual judges are needed to review and evaluate the papers based on a provided rubric.
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Click the link below to see some sample competitive event videos. If you'd like to follow along, you can download the sample scenario to the right of the video before watching it.
https://www.deca.org/high-school-programs/competitive-events-sample-videos-hs/
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Volunteers choose what type of event they'd like to judge - virtual scoring of written projects, in-person scoring of prepared presentations, or in-person scoring of role play events. In addition to this, you'll provide your comfort level in judging our different career clusters. With these two pieces of information, we place judges in events. Volunteers do not pick specific events to judge.
