Computer Science Competitions for High School Students - Approaches to Classification and New Task Types

International computer science (or informatics) competitions for high school students traditionally concentrate on “algorithmic programming”. I.e., students are required to solve algorithmic problems and implement the solutions as computer programs. For grading the students’ work, programs are checked for correctness by automatically testing their input/output behavior. This approach has its benefits. In particular, the automatic grading process in contrast to a manual review process is less prone to subjectivity; mathematically taken, an evaluation function is implemented. However, there are also shortcomings. An automatic process may fail to be fair, too: Small mistakes may lead to complete failure, while other mistakes may not be discovered, and systematically so. Moreover, automatic systems may not be able to evaluate all possible aspects of a solution; e.g., quality of thought and clarity of expression are such problematic dimensions. In the following, we will first sketch the landscape of computer science competitions for (high school) students. On the national level in particular, there is an interesting variety of contest approaches. Then, some suggestions for augmenting international contests are made.