Bebras Challenge Research Articles

Gender perspective in the computational thinking program of Uruguay: teachers’ perceptions and results of the Bebras tasks

The Uruguayan computational thinking (CT) program promotes CT skills for students in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Since 2017, it has reached over 70,000 students, with participation and Bebras challenge performance equally distributed by gender. This study examines gender perspectives in the program, focusing on teacher perceptions, student outcomes, and participation. Positive initiatives to encourage girls’ involvement are described. A survey revealed a slight preference among teachers for boys in programming and CT skills. Bebras results showed girls performed equally well, or better, than boys. The findings highlight that while progress has been made toward gender equality in Uruguay’s CT program, challenges remain. The fact that girls perform as well as boys is promising. Addressing teacher biases and gender stereotypes can help create a more inclusive environment for all students to develop CT skills.

Peningkatan Soft Skill Melalui Program Pelatihan Bebras Challenge Untuk Meningkatkan Kemampuan Computational Thinking Siswa SMK

The purpose of this service activity is to improve the Computational Thinking (CT) skills of vocational students through the Bebras Challenge training program. Since its introduction by Wing in 2006, CT has become a major focus in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. In the context of this service activity, some of the problems identified involved students' lack of proficiency in CT, ignorance of Bebras Challenge activities, and lack of promotion of the use of the internet in CT learning. This training was carried out by applying lecture methods, question and answer sessions, and exercises/practices. The results of the implementation of this service activity show that students can apply Computational Thinking to solve everyday problems. This service method proved effective in motivating students and teachers to actively use technology as a CT learning tool. In addition, this training helps students to better understand the types of challenges faced in Bebras and the concept of CT.

Pengenalan Computational Thinking Sebagai Metode Problem Solving Kepada Guru SD Di Kabupaten Luwu Utara

The development of problem-solving skills is crucial in facing global competition. Therefore, early training is necessary. With the advancement of technology and computer usage, a new approach to developing problem-solving skills has emerged, known as Computational Thinking (CT). CT is derived from the fundamental principles of computer science, where problems are understood in an abstract manner and solutions are formulated through illustration. Since 2016, Indonesia has actively participated in the Bebras Community and promoted Computational Thinking by organizing the Bebras Challenge for students across the country. The Faculty of Engineering at UNM has become one of the Bebras Bureaus involved in organizing the Bebras Challenge in South Sulawesi. The Bebras outreach to teachers aims to introduce this Computational Thinking skill so that every teacher can convey and train their students in developing problem-solving skills. The outreach was attended by representative teachers from 100 elementary schools in Kabupaten Luwu Utara

Indonesian Bebras Challenge 2021 Exploratory Data Analysis

Indonesia is a full member of International Bebras Community and regularly perform the annual Bebras Challenge since 2016. The tasks for the Indonesian Bebras Challenge are taken and adapted from International Bebras Task pool, and each of the tasks is related to informatics and Computational Thinking (CT). We explore and analyze the Indonesian Bebras Challenge 2021 data to find interesting insight into Indonesian student’s competencies in informatics and computational thinking, the suitability of the selected Bebras Tasks difficulty level for each age group, and the relation between participants’ score and time duration in completing Bebras Challenge. The data exploratory has been done with statistics and data visualizations. We found that Indonesian students need to learn more about informatics and CT. The difficulty level of the Indonesian Bebras Challenge for elementary school students is still in accordance with Indonesian students’ competency. In contrast, the Bebras Challenge difficulty level for junior and senior high school is higher than the students’ competency. By analyzing the time duration of each participant completing the challenge, we also found some dishonest attitude presumptions during the online Bebras Challenge. We discover some suggestions for the improvement of Indonesian Bebras Challenge event as a means to improve Indonesian students’ informatics and CT skills.

Short Tasks for Scaffolding Computational Thinking by the Global Bebras Challenge

The short task methodology enhances the Bebras constructive environment, and provides an emotional context that triggers the convolution of initially biased mental models and corresponding emotional reactions into an unbiased set of conceptual models for informatics education. This provides the motivation of our research–to explore the process of pedagogical design of short informatics concept-based tasks from the standpoint of mindset formation, which allows one to build conceptual models for CT education. The aim of the research is to gain a conceptual understanding of what a short task is in the context of the global Bebras Challenge initiative. We explore the principles which should underlie the pedagogical design of short tasks for informatics education that scaffold CT. Exploration of a number of practical examples of the Bebras short tasks is the background of our research methodology. The results include an analysis of the structure of short tasks, focusing on the interaction of mental models, conceptual models, and heuristics inherent in the task design. The discussion provides a comprehensive insight into the issues of the short tasks in relation to CT and the Bebras environment. We conclude with recommendations for organizing an effective pedagogical design of a short task.

A Comparison of Abstraction and Algorithmic Tasks Used in Bebras Challenge

This paper focuses on the analysis of Bebras Challenge tasks to find Informatics tasks that develop abstract thinking. Our study seeks to find which Bebras tasks develop abstraction and in what way. We analysed hundreds of tasks from the Czech contest to identify those tasks requiring participants to abstract directly or use abstract structures. Results show that an agreement among experts on stating which task is focused on abstraction is at a moderate level. We discovered that tasks focused on abstraction occur four to five times less frequently in sets of contest tasks than algorithmic tasks. Our findings proved that abstract tasks results compared with algorithmic ones did not differ in neither age nor gender group of contestants.

Introduction to the Special Issue

The topic of 2021’s special issue is The Role(s) of Abstraction in CS Education. Abstraction is a pillar of computational thinking and plays a key role in many CS related areas. In computational thinking abstraction is used to understand a problem, manage its complexity and select an appropriate level of detail and degree of generality when solving it. Procedural and data abstractions allow algorithms to be used without knowledge of their details. Besides, the ability to abstract facilitates generalization and knowledge transfer. Abstraction has been considered, either implicitly or explicitly, in the literature that covers top-down design of programs, system modelling and problem solving. However, teaching students to abstract when reading, designing or implementing code remains a challenge at both k-12 and tertiary level. Hence, our goal when proposing this special issue was to provide a range of papers that could help instructors to understand abstraction in more depth and to find approaches or insights on how to foster abstraction in the classroom. We have achieved that goal by collating eight papers that describe the multiple roles of abstraction in CS education. Three papers focus on programming skills, as teaching them is a core and challenging task for educators. Fowler et al. explore the abstraction skills needed to reason analytically about source code. Haglund, Strömbäck and Mannila focus on the challenges posed to students by functional abstraction, while Sbaraglia, Lodi and Martini discuss the abstraction mechanisms of programming languages and the rollercoaster of abstraction that students face at introductory level. Four papers present different perspectives of abstraction in specific CS fields. Dorodchi et al. discuss abstraction in modelling and its role in teaching software engineering; Strömbäck, Mannila and Kamkar investigate how students abstract the behaviour of concurrent programs; Ginat illustrates the use of abstraction to solve algorithmic tasks, and Vaníček, Šimandl and Klofáč identify computational tasks from the Bebras Challenge that would help to develop abstract thinking. Finally, Mirolo et al. provide an overview of abstraction in CS education literature that binds the different perspectives within computer science and computational thinking. We are thankful to the authors of this special issue for sharing their perspectives and their experiences on the use of abstraction in their fields.

Service Learning in Teachers and Students Mentoring for 2020 Bebras Challenge in Pandemic Era at Maranatha Bebras Bureau Christian University

Bebras Challenge is a competition for elementary to high school students to educate informatics and computational thinking, followed by sixty countries all over the world. Bebras Indonesia Community in coordination with the International Bebras Committee holds the challenge yearly. Indonesia has participated in the Bebras Challenge since 2016. Faculty of Information Technology Maranatha Christian University as a Bebras Bureau has also been involved in the challenge since 2016. To prepare students for Bebras Challenge, Maranatha Bebras Bureau holds a teacher workshop yearly. The Teacher Workshop supports teachers to strengthen students in practicing Bebras tasks. Data on students who participated in the Bebras Challenge at Maranatha Bebras Bureau indicates increasing numbers from 2016 until 2020. This paper describes a service learning for mentoring teachers and students in the Bebras Challenge, which was held in the pandemic year 2020. Teacher mentoring was using a service learning approach, where the lecturers provided training to the teachers and then the teachers would share their knowledge back to their students. There were advantages and disadvantages of the execution during the pandemic. Although in a distance learning condition, teachers and students were still enthusiastic to participate in Bebras Challenge. The number of students who followed the 2020 Bebras Challenge nearly five times compared to 2019 in the Maranatha Bebras Bureau. The scores of elementary school students who followed the challenge showed very good results. On the other side, the results of junior and senior high school students were not as good as the scores of elementary school students.

Snapshot of Computational Thinking in Turkey: A Critique of 2019 Bebras Challenge

This study aims to provide a deeper understanding about the Bebras tasks, which is one of the computational thinking (CT) unplugged activities, in terms of age level, task category, and CT skills. Explanatory sequential mixed method was adopted in the study in order to collect data according to the research questions. The participants of the study were 113,653 school students from different age levels. Anonymous data was collected electronically from the Turkey 2019 Bebras challenge. Factor analysis was employed to reveal the construct validity to determine how accurately the tool measured the abstract psychological characteristics of the participants. In addition, the item discrimination index was calculated to measure how discriminating the items in the challenge were. Qualitative data gathered through the national Bebras workshop was analysed according to content analysis. The findings highlighted some interesting points about the implications of the Bebras Challenge for Turkey, which are discussed in detail. Furthermore, common problems of Bebras tasks are identified and possible suggestions for improvement are listed.

비버챌린지를 활용한 고등학교급의 빅 데이터 분석 개념 탐구 수업안 설계: ‘소셜 데이터 분석’ 개념을 중심으로

The purpose of this study is to support and expand developing educational cases by applying big data analysis to informatics(SW·AI) education as part of basic research. The Bebras Challenge is an international educational innovation and content developed to increase interest in computer science and cultivate computational thinking skills based on tasks that students of all ages can understand without special prior knowledge. In this study, to support the development of educational cases for applying basic concepts related to big data analytics to informatics(SW·AI) education, based on the Bebras Challenge tasks, a lesson plan to explore the concept of ‘Social Network Analytics’ applicable at the high school level was designed. To this end, the tasks were selected based on the previous research that explored the tasks dealing with the concepts related to big data analytics in the Bebras Challenge 2017-2019. The lesson plan was designed based on the problem based learning model, to achieve performance expectations and goals related to the ‘Big Data’ content element presented in the high school intensification stage of the artificial intelligence education content standard. The results of this study contribute to field-based lesson study in that they can be used as basic data for developing teaching and learning cases using the Bebras Challenge in classes to learn the principles of informatics(SW·AI) concepts.

Effect Of Execution Time Analysis Epl Program For Computational Thinking Of Elementary School Students ^

Software education has emerged as a hot topic around the world, with the goal to raise interests on computational thinking. However, assessments on the computational thinking have not been actively conducted thus far. According to a study by Lee (2019), which analyzed 138 papers on computational thinking published in Korean journals from 2015 to 2018, software education has been introduced and studies on computational thinking are being conducted, but studies on teaching methods that2 improve computational thinking are needed. In this study, we developed and applied a primary educational programming language(EPL) program focused on execution time analysis aimed at improving computational thinking. By using the “Bebras Challenge” as an assessment tool and SPSS as a statistical tool, educational effects were analyzed through the results of pre- and post-computational thinking assessments. The analysis outcomes showed that the EPL education focused on execution time analysis was effective in improving the computational thinking of elementary school students. Putting execution time analysis EPL into primary software education as an educational topic will be effective in improving computational thinking.

Getting Inspired by Bebras Tasks. How Italian Teachers Elaborate on Computing Topics

The Bebras challenge offers pupils and teachers an engaging opportunity to discover informatics, by solving small tasks that aim at promoting computational thinking. Explanations and comments that reveal the computing concepts underlying the tasks are published after the contest, and teachers are encouraged to use this material in their school practice. In this paper we present an exploratory study aimed at investigating how teachers can make use of Bebras material; in particular our interest is understanding whether teachers are able to identify, comprehend, and apply the computing concepts implied by Bebras tasks, and how they can integrate them into their teaching practice. We qualitatively analyzed teaching projects developed by Italian teachers during a workshop on computing education and based on Bebras tasks; the analysis shows that teachers are in general able to build upon the tasks soundly, but it also raises some critical issues.

Meningkatkan Kemampuan Problem Solving Siswa-Siswi SMA Negeri 7 Semarang melalui Bebras Challenge

Associative and directed thinking are two important ways when a person thinks of an idea that is directly continuous with the emergence of other ideas and in the end has been coherently determined the direction of problem solving. Things like that are often experienced by everyone, especially high school students. The various school assignments they have to do, socialize with school friends, and interact with family at home are so complex that the problems exist that require students to think critically and solve problems well. Bebras Challenge is one of the contests that directs participants, especially high school level, to practice problem solving skills through learning activities by working on problems. The Bebras Challenge activity was attended by various levels of schools, from the lowest levels of Elementary School to Senior High School. SMA Negeri 7 Semarang was one of the participants who took part in the Bebras Challenge, students were encouraged to practice problem solving skills in the contest. The end result of the Bebras Challenge activity is to improve students' abilities in dealing with various problems, one of which is that in the field of subjects in schools, they are able to answer questions in different ways and have the same final result . DOI: https://doi.org/10.26905/abdimas.v5i3.4320

Exercising the Students Computational Thinking Ability using Bebras Challenge

In this paper, we present our observation regarding the student’s computational thinking skill in the region of Sumatera Utara, Indonesia. The observation is based on the result of Bebras Indonesia 2019, a computer-based countrywide test on computational thinking aimed at students in primary school, middle school, and high school. We collected the data in a specific targeted region (the province of Sumatera Utara), collects additional data from the participant’s school, and analyse the data. Our objective is to find a pattern between the schools’ approach, if any, regarding topics related to computation thinking to the ability of students to actually solve the problem based on their score in the test.

A Study on the Effect of Bebras Challenge to Raise CT

본 연구는 2018년 3월부터 2015 개정 교육과정에 기초하여 시행되고 있는 중학교 정보 교육의 목표를 통해 학습자들이 효율적으로 컴퓨팅 사고력을 갖추기 위한 학습법에 대해 연구하였다. 이를 위해, 비버챌린지를 통해 학습자들이 컴퓨팅 사고력을 갖추고 문제를 해결할 수 있는 능력을 키우는 것에 효과가 있는지 살펴보았다. 먼저 비버챌린지의 기출문제들을 분석하고, 이 문제들이 현재의 교육과정에 적합한지를 살펴보고, 비버챌린지를 학습 도구로 사용했을 때, 학생들의 컴퓨팅 사고력의 증대와 호기심, 만족도에 어떤 영향을 가져왔는지 연구하였다. 비버챌린지의 공개된 기출문제들과 체험하기 문항들을 통해 정보 교과와의 연관성, 적합성, 컴퓨팅 사고력을 키우기에 적합한 과제인지 분석해 보고, 이것을 학습 도구로 사용했을 때, 학생들의 컴퓨팅 사고력과 호기심, 만족도에 유의미한 결과를 가져온다는 것을 확인하였다.

Analyzing Task Difficulty in a Bebras Contest Using Cuttle

Predicting the difficulty level of a task on the concepts of computer science or computational thinking, like in the Bebras Challenge, proves to be really hard. But the announced difficulty level is needed in the contest format used in many local challenges. The Dutch contest system Cuttle has a new module for analysis. This is applied to one specific contest in order to find parameters explaining task difficulty. Using quantitative methods we were able to confirm a relation between answer types and difficulty and a tendency that tasks on data, data structures and representation are better answered than tasks on algorithms and programming.

"로봇 활용 SW 교육에서 컴퓨팅사고력 평가: 지필 시험, 비버챌린지, 자기보고식 설문을 중심으로"

"로봇 활용 SW 교육에서 컴퓨팅사고력 평가: 지필 시험, 비버챌린지, 자기보고식 설문을 중심으로"

"로봇 활용 SW 교육에서 컴퓨팅사고력 평가: 지필 시험, 비버챌린지, 자기보고식 설문을 중심으로"

"로봇 활용 SW 교육에서 컴퓨팅사고력 평가: 지필 시험, 비버챌린지, 자기보고식 설문을 중심으로"

비버 챌린지 2017을 통한 초등학생들의 컴퓨팅 사고 수준 분석

비버 챌린지 2017을 통한 초등학생들의 컴퓨팅 사고 수준 분석

How Hard Will this Task Be? Developments in Analyzing and Predicting Question Difficulty in the Bebras Challenge

Predicting the difficulty level of a task on the concepts of computer science or computational thinking, like in the Bebras Challenge, proves to be really hard. Question difficulty breaks down in content difficulty, stimulus difficulty and task difficulty. Several instruments are suggested to predict the overall difficulty level, like using a questionnaire or a rubric; these instruments are applied on the data of a recent contest and proved useful. Relative scoring could also turnout helpful. Especially on content difficulty easy applicable solutions are lacking.