Yesterday, students gathered at Stanford University for the finals of Code Quest, an international tournament between American and Chinese students that began with over 5,000 students in China. After three rounds of competition, the top 26 Chinese students qualified for the Code Quest final and were joined by a group of American peers. These global teams built collaborative projects that were evaluated by professional judges and volunteers from prestigious universities and companies such as Stanford, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.
“It was so exciting to host these students and see their collaborative projects. It’s a real challenge to write hundreds of lines of Python and create a unique project in a tournament setting. It requires integrating multiple aspects of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math), all while communicating and collaborating with teammates across language and cultural barriers. It was truly amazing to see,” said Nick Winter, CEO and Co-founder of CodeCombat.
Students from both countries were broken into pairs and jointly coded a project within three hours. As a team, they needed to come up with a concept, design a logic mechanism, write code in Python, and then test their design to ensure it works. Beyond that, they needed to demo their projects and present to judges.
“We ran an extremely challenging evaluation process to bring the most outstanding kids to Stanford University for the global final tournament. The students were very motivated to join the global challenge, open their minds to new experiences, and meet with American peers. It goes beyond the tournament itself, and brought value and inspiration for the kids in the long run,” remarked Patrick Pan, General Manager of Tarena.
After evaluations by a panel of 12 judges, students were presented with four categories of awards: Creativity (overall design), Computational Thinking (complexity and logic), Presentation (public speech), and Collaboration (team spirit). Each category included Gold, Silver and Bronze medals and unique prizes. Two teams were also awarded the Grand Prize.
“This was my first trip to the USA. I learned about the CodeCombat program nine months ago and have found it to be really exciting! I feel very lucky to be selected for the Code Quest global finals. The Stanford trip really inspired me to learn computer science, solve the problems facing the world, and study computer science at university,” said Yining Wang, whose team, YKS, won silver in presentation. Wang is studying in grade 5 in Ximajinrun Primary School in Beijing.
Congratulations to all the student coding heroes!
Final Rankings can be found on blog.codecombat.com/codequest/
About CodeCombat
CodeCombat is a platform for students to learn computer science while playing a real game. It has helped 12M users learn Python and JavaScript. CodeCombat is a standards-aligned curriculum and an endorsed provider of curriculum and professional development for AP® Computer Science Principles (AP CSP). Teachers, students, and individuals can sign up for CodeCombat and try the first course for free.
About Tarena
Tarena is a leading provider of professional education services in China with a core strength in IT professional education services. Listed in NASDAQ with professional training experience for 17 years, Tarena has an innovative education platform combining live distance instruction, classroom-based tutoring and online learning modules.