Different Approaches for Making the Initial Selection of Talented Students in Programming Competitions

Abstract

Abstract. Competitions in informatics are one of the most useful ways of engaging pupils to the field of computer science. Many national and international competitions are carried out each year, with the organizers of each of them attempting to reach out to as many potential students as possible. In this paper, we analyse several different contest types, how each of them aids to promote computer science by engaging students in competitions, and how they can help provide the initial selection of talented students for the later stages of the competitions. Based on that, we propose seven criteria for the classification of the contests. Further we present our rich experience in the organization of Macedonian contests. Finally, we propose different approaches for making the initial selection of talented students in programming competitions and discuss ways for alleviating some of the issues with standard contests, for example enabling feedback and introducing difficulty divisions.

New Approach for Comparison of Countries’ Achievements in Science Olympiads

“…The selected pupils represent themselves and Macedonia at the (Junior) Balkan Olympiad in Informatics (BOI/JBOI), European Junior Olympiad in Informatics (EJOI) and the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), as well as at other smaller regional competitions. The main organizer of the competitions in informatics for primary and secondary school pupils is the Computer Society of Macedonia (Kostadinov et al, 2015). The total budget for the complete cycle that is raised mainly by sponsors is around 8000 euros per year.…”

“…In the last few years, participants received full feedback for their submissions, which wasn't the case with earlier Olympiads. The contest is usually organized in two competition days, and countries are limited to 4 competitors each (Kostadinov et al, 2015). The first IOI was held in 1989, and this year, the thirtieth Olympiad will be held (in Tsukuba, Japan).…”

“…In general, competitions are a major factor in education (Verhoeff, 1997). A lot of countries use different forms of competitions in order to encourage students to perform better in school (for example, in order to earn scholarships or grants), to bring the best out of them (by enrolling students into special programs based on their interests), or to promote cooperation by grouping students into teams and teaching them (through competitions) the importance of collaboration between people with different talents and preferences (Kostadinov et al, 2015). Whatever the goal, competitions must be fair in order to make them engaging for the participants.…”

Platform for Analysing and Encouraging Student Activity on Contest and E-learning Systems

“…In Macedonia, regional and national competitions are organized in several STEMrelated subjects. For example, competitions in informatics are held in Macedonia since 1990, and they involve solving algorithmic tasks by coding solutions that are later automatically graded (Kostadinov et al, 2015). After several stages of competitions, the best primary and secondary school students represent the country and themselves at the Balkan Olympiad in Informatics (BOI), the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), and the Junior BOI (for younger students).…”

Constructive Problems in the Structure of the Olympiad in Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Informatics

“…The works of Seymour Papert actually used Vygotsky ideas in the conditions of the appearance of a computer and "smart objects" in a child environment. They are introduced into a child environment and through the interaction with them it forms his representation of important scientific ideas and analyzes its own thinking (Papert, 1980); For the last 10-15 years, there has been rapidly growing the movement of mass competetions, which tend to occupy an intermediate place between the school course of computer science and mathematics and the Olympiad movement (van der Vegt, 2016;Kostadinov et al, 2015;Sysło and Kwiatkowska, 2015). The most famous contest is the BEBRAS competition, which brought together the methodological ideas of scientists and practitioners from more than 60 countries in overcoming this challenge (Dagienė and Sentance, 2016).…”