SUSTAINING INFORMATICS EDUCATION BY CONTESTS

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SUSTAINING INFORMATICS EDUCATION BY CONTESTS

• Valentina Dagiene
• Institute of Mathematics and Informatics
• Vilnius, Lithuania

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Content

• Informatics Education What? Why? How?
• Contests on Programming for Secondary Education
• International Olympiads in Informatics (IOI)
• IOI Conference and Journal
• Regional and National Olympiads
• Bebras (Beaver) Contest on Informatics and
  Computer Fluency
• Learning by Contest Ground on Tasks (Attractive)

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What is Informatics? Informatics Education?
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Programming as part of problem solving
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How we should teach Informatics?
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When I was at school...

• I liked solving
• Crosswords
• Rebuses
• Brain-teasers
• Riddles
• Logical quizzes
• Puzzles
• Later I liked creating and publishing puzzles in
  the journals

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My kids and pupils like...

• Playing
• games with computer
• games with mobile devices
• table games
• pencil and paper games
• Competing individually and by groups
• Competing on collective intellectual level

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Why contest?

• For pupils, playful activities are more
  interesting and attractive than consistent
  learning
• Contest and competition
• attract learners
• raise motivation
• stimulate the learning process
• ... and more
• forster planning and self-discipline
• ... and very important --
• give the possibility to meet peers from all over
  the region, country, continent, world

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How to develop a contest?Two types of strategies

1. Top-down strategy is a challenge to find a
   suitable international contest, train students,
   and join it after intensive work
2. Bottom-up strategy stresses an opportunity to
   establish the original local contest

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Olympiads in Informatics

• International Olympiads in Informatics (IOI)
• Regional Olympiads in Informatics
• National Olympiads in Informatics

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Contests in Informatics
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International Olympiad in Informatics

• IOI is annual international informatics
  competition for individual contestants from 70-80
  countries
• IOI is managed by the General Assembly and
  International Committee

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International Olympiad in Informatics

• IOI is organized in and by one of the
  participating countries
• IOI competitions focuses of informatics problems
  of an algorithmic nature -- programming
• Country delegation consists of 4 students and 2
  team leaders
• Two competitions days, 5 hours, 3 (1) tasks
• Evaluation is based on automated testing

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Additional credits of the IOI

• Introduction to Informatics education in
  countries
• Influence on developing regional and national
  contests
• Social network for students and team leaders

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IOI Conference

• Two-half days conference during Olympiad
• Short and long presentations
• Publications
• Richard Forster, UK
• Valentina Dagiene, Lithuania
• Troy Vasiga, Canada

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International Journal

• 2007 17 papers, 174 p.
• 2008 16 papers, 207 p.
• 2009 14 papers, 174 p.
• 47 publications from 30 countries during 3 year
• http//www.mii.lt/olympiads_in_informatics

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Regional and National Olympiads in Informatics

• National olympiads represent informatics teaching
  traditions of each country
• Regional olympiad is a mini model of IOI
• allows the participants to experience what they
  will come through in the IOI
• assists team leaders in selecting participants
  for the IOI

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Baltic Olympiads in Informatics - BOI

• Main objectives
• To provide students experience of an
  international competition
• To bring together national representatives and
  create commonly contest tasks
• To assist team leaders in selecting participants
  for the IOI
• Important features
• Based on mutual trust of the participating
  countries
• Form of learning for its participants
• Create neighborly atmosphere, which is highly
  important when motivating students for self-help

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The BOI contests
Year Location Countries Contestants
2009 Stockholm, SWEDEN 8 48
2008 Gdynia, POLAND 10 59
2007 Güstrow, GERMANY 9 55
2006 Heinola, FINLAND 9 53
2005 Pasvalys, LITHUANIA 8 46
2004 Ventspils, LATVIA 8 48
2003 Tartu, ESTONIA 7 48
2002 Vilnius, LITHUANIA 8 52
2001 Sopot, POLAND 8 49
2000 Haninge, SWEDEN 7 38
1999 Riga, LATVIA 7 44
1998 Tartu, ESTONIA 5 40
1997 Vilnius, LITHUANIA 4 36
1996 Riga, LATVIA 3 20
1995 Tartu, ESTONIA 3 28
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Baltic Olympiad in Informatics in Poland in 2001
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Baltic Olympiad in Informatics in Lithuania in
2002
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BOI task classification 19952009
Categories Number of tasks
Combinatorial search 14
Dynamic programming 19
Graph theory 22
Mathematics 10
Ad hoc 23
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Lithuanian Olympiads in Informatics Main
objectives

• To bring the discipline of Informatics to the
  attention of young people
• To discover, encourage, bring together,
  challenge, train for IOIs and give recognition
  to the exceptionally gifted in the field of
  informatics
• To develop student creativity, programming style,
  algorithmic thinking
• To stimulate work of teachers of informatics and
  information technology

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Lithuanian Olympiads in Informatics Structure

• Two divisions juniors and seniors
• 1st round school round
• 2nd round regional round
• 3rd round, 1st part national round (by the
  internet)
• 3th round, 2nd part national round
  (face-to-face)

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Lithuanian Olympiads in Informatics Number of
participants
Year Round Round Round Round
Year 1st 2nd 3.1 3.2
1990 Not available Not available 57 25
1998 Not available 858 216 46
2001 2990 984 292 47
2002 3857 1124 257 46
2003 3754 1001 292 47
2008 3307 ?1000 219 47
2009 ?3000 ?1000 290 48
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Evaluation in Lithuanian Olympiads

• Programs the black-box testing
• Evaluation of design (algorithm) ideas
• Evaluation of programming style

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Participation in Olympiad is stimulated by
attractive tasks

• Interest and engagement are very important in
  problem solving
• Tasks should be presented in an attractive way
• Two types of tasks
• 1) developing algorithms (writing)
• 2) analyzing algorithms (reading)

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Contests in Informatics

• Contests are a source of inspiration and
  innovation
• Test-and attractive-tasks-based contests may be
  the key to the potential of new knowledge and
  attractive way to bind up technology and
  education
• Bebras (Beaver) International Contest on
  Informatics and Computer Fluency
• The main principles of the Bebras contest are
  borrowed from the international mathematical
  contest Kangaroo

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Bebras International Contest on Informatics and
Computer Fluency

• Idea came in 2003, in Lithuania
• 2004, Sept 25, experimental trial, 779 students
• 2004, Oct 21, first Lithuanian Beaver contest,
  3470 students from 146 schools
• ....
• 2008 10 countries have run the contest with all
  together more than 90 000 students
• 2009 11 countries
• Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia,
  Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, The
  Netherlands, Ukraine

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http//www.bebras.org
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International Bebras Contest

• Adresses all secondary school students
• Is usually performed at school
• Pupils have to solve 18 - 24 problems within 45 -
  60 minutes
• Easy, medium and hard problems
• Interactive and multiple choice answers
• Different tasks for several age groups, e.g.
• Benjamins 10-12 years (grade 5-6)
• Cadetts 13-14 years (grade 7-8)
• Juniors 15-16 years (grade 9-10)
• Seniors 17-19 years (grade 11-13)

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Research Question

• How to convey Informatics concepts by a contest?
• What kind of concepts?
• What are good tasks in an international contest?
• How to involve concepts in good tasks?

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Attractive tasks keystone of contests

• Very important to choose interesting tasks,
  powerful, attractive, surprise...
• Powerful what educational power they contains,
  whether they stimulate the motivation of learning
  
• Different types of tasks starting from common
  questions of computer science application to
  specific integrated problems related to
  algorithms, computer history, programming
  languages, logics, discrete mathematics, etc.
• Important to choose the problems so that the
  participants could have as equal positions as
  possible irrespective of hardware or software

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Attractive Tasks

• are interesting, powerful, surprising, inspiring,
  ...
• stimulate and motivate to use ICT in an
  intelligent way
• offer equal chance for all pupils coming from
  different countries and different school types
• offer possibility to learn something interesting

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Task Categories

• INF - Information comprehension
• representation (symbolic, numeric, visual)
• coding, encryption
• ALG - Algorithmic thinking
• including programming aspects
• USE - Using computer systems
• eg. search engines, email, spread sheet, etc.
• general principles, but no specific systems
• STRUC - Structures, patterns and arrangements
• combinatory
• discrete structures (graphs, etc)
• PUZ - Puzzles
• logic
• games (mastermind, minesweeper, etc.)
• SOC - ICT and Society
• social, ethical, cultural, international, legal
  issues

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Learning Concepts

• Students may learn concepts by appropriate tasks
• Concepts of
• Information Comprehension
• Algorithmic Thinking
• Modeling
• Basic Logic
• Discrete Structures
• Functionality of Computer Systems
• Use of Computer Systems
• etc.

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Fastest Way

•   Beaver wants to go home as fast as possible. In
  the drawing you see minutes needed to come from
  one point to another. What is the best possible
  time?
• A) 17 minutes
• B) 14 minutes
• C) 15 minutes
• D) 16 minutes
• Benjamin, hard

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Paperchase

• Peter writes on a paper the letters he finds on
  his way following the arrows. Some of the arrows
  have no letter
• Which one of the following sequences of letters
  cannot be written by Peter on his way from START
  to FINISH?

A. abaabba B. ba C. abaaab D. aab
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Bebras Workshops for develping tasks
The Bebras Community has worshops for developing
tasks in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009 in Balsiai,
Lithuania and 2008 in Torun, Poland
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Balsiai Lithuania 2009
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May, 2009, Balsiai, Lithuania
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Conclusion

• Informatics Education is a fascinating research
  with a big impact on the real world, full of
  spectacular ideas and great challenges
• Contests play an important role as a tool of
  motivation and inspiration
• Olympiad in Informatics is a globally recognized
  way to involve pupils into informatics and strong
  motive to improve their programming skills
• Bebras contest on informatics and computer
  fluency is established to introduce Informatics
  concepts to pupils regardless of whether she or
  he is taught informatics at school or not

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THANKS!