This is the list of responsibilities for university and high school facilitators.

As soon as possible

• Read this booklet and familiarize yourself with the contest. NACLO has been active for years. The web site (www.naclo.cs.cmu.edu) has all the relevant information about the contest, including many sample problems.

• Circulate email announcements, flyers and practice problems to students at your school or near your university. Contact us (naclo12org@umich.edu) for advice on how to advertise the contest. Also, share with us any inventive ways of outreach that you have come up with.

• Tell interested students to register online.

• (optional). Arrange for a training/information session. The NACLO web site has instructions for running such sessions.

• Reserve a contest room (starting 30 minutes before the contest start time). This will allow you time to welcome the students, thank the sponsors and local volunteers, read the rules, etc. as well as distribute and collect the contest booklets. The students should have exactly three hours to actually work on the booklets.

• Make sure that your room is big enough. Based on the number of students registered so far, estimate how many students will participate. Your room should be big enough for the participants to spread out so that they cannot see each other's papers. In Pittsburgh, the local hosts seat students in an auditorium in every other seat, every other row, so only one quarter of the seats are filled. Use your own judgment about what is best at your location.

• Make sure that the room has an internet connection. You (the facilitator) will use the internet connection to communicate with the jury during the competition.

• (optional) Schedule additional facilitators if needed. Use your judgment about how many facilitators you will need. There should be at least one person in the room with the participants at all times to take questions and make sure that nobody breaking any rules.

• Make sure that the room has desks. The students need a writing surface. The room in Pittsburgh has only little wings on the arms of the chairs, but students are spread out so they can use more than one. You may get more winners at your location if the students are more comfortable!

• Make sure that there will be enough space in the contest room for each student to work without seeing other students’ papers.

• Send email to naclo12org@umich.edu once you have set up a local web page with information for contestants (e.g., building and room number, driving directions, schedule, etc.). We will then list your page on the NACLO web site.

• Monitor the registration page for your site at www.naclo.cs.cmu.edu to keep track of the number of students registered for your site. In 2008, we had anywhere from 4 to 250 students at a given site with a mean of 10 students per site (800 students at 80 sites).

• Send reminders to the students about the contest. Plan for two email or paper announcements, two weeks before the competition and one week before the competition. The first one can be a reminder of the dates and times. The second one should include directions to your location, a schedule for the day including what the student should do about lunch (see below), and a list of rules.

  
  

• (optional). Plan to print a NACLO poster listing the sponsors. We will send you a poster by email. If you don't have a large poster printer, we will mail it to you on paper. Let naclo12org@umich.edu know ASAP if you would like us to send you one.

• (optional). Do you have any souvenirs for the students? T-shirts, keychains, pens, etc. We do not have funding to help out with these, but see if you can get something from your department, school, university, or from local businesses.

• (optional). Do you want to give the students any food before or after the competition (not during)? Again, we do not have funding to help out with this, but if you can get someone to donate some food, go ahead. In Pittsburgh, we plan to give them a snack during the registration/check-in time, and tell the students that if they need to eat again before the end of the competition they can bring their own food that is not distracting to other participants (not smelly or noisy).

• (optional). Do you want to give out college or career information? In Pittsburgh this is done during the registration/check-in hour because several schools need to leave immediately after the competition. The LSA (Linguistics Society of America) web site has several brochures on their FAQ page. You can also give out information majoring in linguistics at your university, and you can have brochures or representatives from language technologies companies.

The day before the contest

• Obtain the booklets from the jury and print them. Make sure that all diagrams and fonts print properly. Print all booklets single-sided as the students will be required to write their answers on them and then each problem will be sent to a different grader.

• You will receive an email that will ask you to confirm that you are ready for the contest. Please reply to it ASAP.

• Please make sure that all students follow the rules. The jury reserves the right to disqualify individual participants or entire sites if the rules are not properly followed.

• Make sure that no student has access to the booklets before the contest starts. Make sure that they are informed not to discuss the problems even after the contest is over (to prevent cross time zone cheating). We will post the problem booklets on the web site as soon as all sites that use them are done.

The day of the contest and beyond

• (optional). Set up a registration table (30 minutes before start time, more if you have one of the largest sites with 50 or more students). You may get some walk-in students who haven’t preregistered. If this happens, let them use your internet connection to register with the NACLO site before the actual contest starts and get a registration number.

• When the contest starts: email us the exact starting time on the day of the contest so that we can keep track. For example, if the designated starting time for the contest in your time zone is 10 AM, please make sure to have all students ready (after you have handed them the problem sets) at 10 AM. If for some reason you start a few minutes late (but not more than 15 minutes late), please make sure to give the full three hours of contest time to the students. So, in your email to naclo08jury@umich.edu, as soon as the students have started working on the problem set, please say something like this: “Kevin Smith - PS 45, Milwaukee, WI - start time 09:04, end time 12:04 - participating: 5 students”.

• When students raise their hands for questions, go to them in order to make sure that they don't blurt out a clue or an answer. Tell the student that you will convey the question to the jury. Do not answer the question even if you think it is simple or obvious. Some time back at a local contest a hint was inadvertently dropped by a facilitator who didn't realize that he was giving something away.

• All questions from the audience should be emailed to the jury (using an email address to be communicated later on). The jury will be periodically updating a web page with all active clarifications that need to be conveyed by the local organizers to all local participants.

• Ask the students to complete a short student evaluation form.

• Fill out the short facilitator evaluation form.

• Collect the booklets and split the sheets by problem number.

• Ship them back to the jury. Instructions will be provided in due time, specifying the way to return the booklets.

• Wait for the results.

• (Optional). Follow up with the students, e.g., for college admissions guidance, etc.