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International Conference on Informatics in Schools: Situation, Evolution, and Perspectives

ISSEP 2019: Informatics in Schools. New Ideas in School Informatics pp 240–255Cite as

The Genesis of a Bebras Task

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11913))

Abstract

This paper reports the milestones a task proposal takes from its initial conception until its use in the Bebras International Challenge of Informatics and Computational Thinking and the experiences that Switzerland has with the procedures with the intent to share best-practices. This includes the Swiss Bebras Task Workshop, the International Bebras Task Workshop, the generation of the Swiss Task Set, the adaptation of a task proposal for the Swiss Bebras Challenge, the Contest System and the Brochure. Although the process is described from the point of view of the Swiss Bebras Challenge, the processes in some other participating countries are similar. The description of the process is accompanied by a task proposal of which the changes over time are documented. The basic findings are that during the year-long process a task proposal experiences several (re-)considerations, several stages of reworking and adaptation but that these reiterations serve towards quality improvement and ensure that each task proposal is up to standard to be offered to the more than 21, 000 participants in Switzerland annually or even (up to and including the International Bebras Task Workshop 2019) 2.78 million students world-wide annually. This paper is targeted at the general audience interested in the process of developing high quality tasks, be it for contests or for general use. It may also be of interest to people working within the Bebras community to compare the Swiss process to their processes of preparing tasks.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this document the term “age groups” with a rough age range is given instead of the school years to enhance the international understanding of the target age of the students. Teachers in Switzerland however register the students based on the school year that they’re in so it could be that some students are older and some students are even younger than the age group stated.

  2. 2.

    This document has been prepared by Ivo Blöchliger, Christian Datzko, Mathias Hiron, Wolfgang Pohl, Eljakim Schrijvers, Alexandra Talon and Jiří Vaníček within the Bebras community.

  3. 3.

    Some countries allow the use of pen and paper.

  4. 4.

    Urs Hauser, Juraj Hromkovič, Regula Lacher, Jacqueline Staub, Christian Datzko, Susanne Datzko, Špela Cerar and Hanspeter Erni contributed to this task. Some of the comments about this task cited later were also done by Zsuzsa Pluhar, Emil Kelevedjiev and Wolfgang Pohl.

  5. 5.

    The original graphics which were replaced later include work done by Vaidotas Kinčius.

  6. 6.

    This is a translation error from German to English: “Rest” in German should have been translated as “with a remainder of” in English.

  7. 7.

    In the last years between 3 and 6 people participated in the Swiss Bebras task workshop.

  8. 8.

    In the last years between 15 and 25 task proposals were collected, not counting variants of task proposals, from these between 9 and 13 were submitted to the international community.

  9. 9.

    One of the tasks got split up into two variants.

  10. 10.

    The complete Swiss task set can be derived from the brochure [16].

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Juraj Hromkovič for the encouragement to start this paper. He would also like to thank his wife Susanne for proof reading this paper in its various stages. This paper would not have been possible without the experience earned within the Swiss Bebras team lead by Hanspeter Erni and by the support we get from Eljakim Schrijvers and his team. A special thanks is owed to Willem van der Vegt who reviewed this paper from the point of view of the Bebras community and gave some valuable feedback. Thanks is also owed to Frances Rosamond and Michael Fellows who reviewed the paper and gave some good advice. The author would also finally like to thank the reviewers for their constructive feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wirtschaftsgymnasium und Wirtschaftsmittelschule Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Christian Datzko

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  1. Christian Datzko
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Correspondence to Christian Datzko .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University, Saint Petersburg, Russia

    Sergei N. Pozdniakov

  2. Data Science Institute, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Valentina Dagienė

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Datzko, C. (2019). The Genesis of a Bebras Task. In: Pozdniakov, S., Dagienė, V. (eds) Informatics in Schools. New Ideas in School Informatics. ISSEP 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11913. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33759-9_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33759-9_19

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