We participated as mentors in the Junior Coder competition at the University of Žilina
- Jun 23, 2024
- 4 min read
The first year of the Junior Coder competition is over and we were able to be a part of it! We appreciate the initiative of the University of Žilina, specifically the Faculty of Management and Informatics, to organize a competition that gives high school students from all over Slovakia the opportunity to show off their programming skills.
One of our long-standing goals is to support young talents and provide them with practical experience in order to educate future IT professionals. Participating in this competition allowed us to meet talented students who delighted us with their creativity and unwavering desire to learn new things.
Cooperation with the Faculty of Management and Informatics, UNIZA
The idea for the concept of the educational-competitive activity came directly from the Faculty of Management and Informatics UNIZA (hereinafter referred to as FRI), with which our colleagues Terézia and Natália have been cooperating for a long time. When the idea for a new competitive activity was born at FRI, the girls accepted the opportunity to become part of the organizational team together with Michal Varga and Michal Mren. The competition consisted of 3 online workshops, 3 home competition tasks and a final, where we met the finalists directly at the faculty premises in Žilina.
Competition open to all high school students
The competition was open to all high school students, regardless of previous programming experience. All we had to do was find the courage, fill out the registration form, and manage to install the environment in which we programmed. Each of the workshops was in the spirit of “OOP in a playful way”, a theme on which our colleagues have already organized several workshops and programming schools not only for students, but also for high school teachers.
First steps in object-oriented programming
The first of the three workshops was led by Natália. At the same time, in addition to programming a simple but effective game, she explained the most basic concepts from the world of object-oriented programming (OOP) to the participating students. "At the beginning, students do not remember all the concepts, but when we show them what they can imagine under a given concept, it immediately becomes easier. During programming, all the terms are repeated, we progress slowly and we repeat what is what many times", explains Naty. In their first project, the students created an aquarium, implemented a player and the basic enemy - a shark.
Heredity in practice
In the second workshop, Terézia introduced the principles of inheritance to the students. They followed up on the project from the first round and together improved the virtual aquarium game. They added new “features”, while still revolving around the aforementioned topic of inheritance in OOP.
The last of the series of workshops was led by my colleague from FRI Michal Mrena, who is also part of the M2Ms team on our space project SENAV. The topic of this round was polymorphism, where Michal and his students turned the aquarium into a non-trivial game not only from the programmer's point of view, but also from the player's point of view.
Homework as a path to improvement
After each workshop, students had a week to complete a homework assignment that tested their knowledge gained during the workshop. In addition to the point assessment, students also received written feedback, and submitted projects were evaluated continuously, which allowed students to correct their solutions and improve their score.
Finals for the best
From 174 high school students, we selected the 29 most successful ones who advanced to the finals.
Challenges, tactics and talent
The content of the workshops, assignments and even the final tasks were under the direction of the organizing team, which decided to continue with the theme of the aquarium, which was already well known to the competitors. In the final, it was possible to get up to 71 points within 22 competition tasks divided into three groups according to the level of difficulty. The competitors could determine the strategy for completing the tasks themselves. This approach provided space for various tactics and approaches, thereby increasing the dynamics and competitive spirit of the competition. Terézia and Natália from the organizing team say that the biggest surprise of the final round was a high school student who solved all 22 tasks within 2 hours. This performance was truly admirable, because some tasks would have troubled many a head. Not only the winner was surprised, but also the close differences between second and third place. The most important thing, however, was that the entire competition day took place in a great atmosphere, the students were in a very good mood and the goal of the competition was fulfilled. Although there could only be three winners, we believe that all 174 students took away valuable experience and knowledge that will propel them to further explore programming and technology skills.
A collaboration that pleases us
We thank our partners from the Faculty of Management and Informatics for this opportunity and are already looking forward to further cooperation.
You can also read about the competition and the winners on the FRI University of Žilina website .
