Quiz Bowl Questions

[mmouw]

Need some help. I am holding a quiz bowl at the Illinois Wing Conference and am in need of questions. Does anyone have a list of questions and answers in a word doc or pdf? Thanks for your help.

[Spaceman3750]

You might want to ask the DCP if you can get your hands on the questions used for wing cadet competition (or older versions of them).

[mmouw]

Already have. I am also a former DCP.

[coudano]

We have our question pool for cadet comp, but we keep them fairly guarded

[Bluelakes 13]

Well, then, you would ask the DCP at the higher echelon for help.

And that would be... let me check...  maybe....  oh yeah.  Me!

Mike shoot me an email.  I think I already sent Jeramee something earlier in the year, but don't recall.

See you Saturday.

[Bluelakes 13]

Why would you guard the pool of questions?  The pool is finite and from specified sources.  I would think people would want to share them rather than keep them secret.

[coudano]

Why would you guard the pool of questions?  The pool is finite and from specified sources.  I would think people would want to share them rather than keep them secret.

We keep our panel quiz and written exam pool 'closed'
people are welcome to develop their own and share freely

[NIN]

Why would you guard the pool of questions?  The pool is finite and from specified sources.  I would think people would want to share them rather than keep them secret.

The information pool is finite, however, the questions might not be.

WIWAC, my squadron was the multi-year powerhouse quiz bowl squadron in Michigan Wing.  Over the course of several years, we had built up an extensive bank of practice questions that was probably actually *larger* than the wing's question bank.

The key was that the questions had to be updated frequently by the Wing CP folks to keep the competition fresh and truly competitive.  Owing to the fact the the information pool is relatively finite, the questions need to be phrased in different ways.

So one question might be  "Name the four forces of flight in balance"?  while another might be "Lift and drag are examples of what?" 

(*thats a poor example of a question, BTW, but I just thought something up*)

There was no way in hell wing was ever going "share" the question pool with us, or anybody else. We had one or two people on our team whose jobs were to maintain the question pool (a gigantic collection of 3x5 cards).  Someone sat in the audience during each quiz bowl and wrote down every single question asked so we could update our unit's question pool.  Plus, our unit pool was reviewed constantly for accuracy with changes to regs, updates to the AE or leadership texts, etc.

[jimmydeanno]

When I trained our squadron's color guard team, I placed the onus on the cadets to develop their question pool.  Each one was assigned a chapter each week of training.  Their task was to write 10 questions out of the chapter they read.  By week 35 of training, we had a pretty good stack (~1750), plus the cadets got pretty good at what was actually in the chapters.  I'd add the new questions to our bank, print off new copies and give them out to the team to study for the next week.  Then, during practice, I'd integrate the questions into the quiz bowl practice session.

By the time the competitions came around, our team rocked the quiz bowl.  They'd answer questions before it was finished being read, and I don't think they got a single question wrong all the way to the national competition.  I remember one of the other team's looking over at our team with a look of "can we answer one, please?"

We wouldn't write the questions down during the competitions, because there really wasn't anything that was being asked that wasn't already in our pool.  One of the other teams asked for our pool once, and I refused to give it to them, simply because of the work and practice that our team had put into developing them, studying them, etc.  If it is a competition, I certainly don't feel comfortable giving away the keys to the teams success.  If a team wants to win, they can put in the effort it takes to do so, not take everyone else's effort and use it.

That was a good year.  It was kind of nice to have a team comprised of all brand new C/AB and have them qualify for the national competition as C/SrAs a few months after joining. 

[Bluelakes 13]

I have already given four Wings the panel quiz questions I used last year.  Because they asked.  And they're guaranteed to not have the same questions this year.  To me, guarding the questions is a sign of laziness that they are not changed every year.  I have Region question sets going back decades!

I was running one of the panel quiz rooms at National Competition last year.  I had a team as you describe - they were answering the questions before the question was completed.  One of the escorts/parents got pissed.  I explained to them that panel quiz is as much strategy as it is knowledge.  I think they got it a little bit, but still did not think it was fair.  I did not create the questions, so I couldn't offer more to them.

Now for GLR, I will use a commonly memorized question, and change it slightly at the end, like make it a negative or something.  Keeps the cadets on their toes.  That's how I roll.   

[Ron1319]

I was running one of the panel quiz rooms at National Competition last year.  I had a team as you describe - they were answering the questions before the question was completed.  One of the escorts/parents got pissed.  I explained to them that panel quiz is as much strategy as it is knowledge.  I think they got it a little bit, but still did not think it was fair.  I did not create the questions, so I couldn't offer more to them.

Right, the question list really is finite.  It's just a matter of building a good database, the cadets learning the answers, and then practicing quiz bowl enough to be better than the next team.  As they say, "It's all in the game."  It's a good game.