Students’ success in the bebras challenge in Lithuania: Focus on a long-term participation

Abstract

The paper deals with students’ participation in the Bebras challenge on Informatics and Computational Thinking in Lithuania in 2010–2015. As noticed, secondary school students have an opportunity to learn the basic informatics concepts during the participation in the Bebras challenge. Analyses of a large amount of data from participants’ task solving records are provided. Additionally, observation of the task difficulty level of the Bebras contest in the past 6 years is presented. The target group, on which a research study was focused, is a group of students who solved tasks 6 years in turn. A detailed overview of their results provides an understanding how the participants have solved tasks over these years. The importance of algorithmic thinking as an opportunity for students to learn and understand the basics of informatics as well as develop their computational thinking skills is emphasised. The results of data analysis highlight the importance of students’ achievements by a long-term participation.