HOW IT WORKS?
STEM4youth invites students and their teachers from secondary or high schools across Europe (from the European Union or EU Candidate Countries) to join the STEM4youth Competition, showing your creativity and your problem-solving ability to work on one of our multidisciplinary problems.
Young students and their teachers who are fascinated by STEM disciplines such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics, will have the opportunity to participate in a scientific trip to CERN as a main prize in the Competition. Here, in a one-day-journey, you will see through the widest community physicist in the world, working on one of the most exciting challenge in human research.
If you are a young student from 15 to 19 age across over Europe, you can create a three people’s team with your mentor teachers, in order to solve one of the competition task we are going to show.
You and your team can select one of the following STEM topic to work on:
a. From Physics to Economics: the versatility of the exponential function
b. Science in 3D
c. Air pollution analysis
d. Led torch spotlight (students) | Led torch spotlight (teachers)
You will find specific instructions provided in the problems description files regarding format, requirement and assessment of the proposed tasks.
The participation in the STEM4youth Open Student competition is voluntary. You can ask questions about the competition before deciding whether to participate. If you do agree to participate, you may withdraw yourself from the project at any time, without giving a reason and without penalty.
The competition starts on January the 15th 2018 and the deadline for application submission is April the 10th 2018.
For detailed information on the applications, guidelines for submissions and description of criteria, see the Rules of STEM4youth Open Student Competition document.
For any other questions or doubts, please see the following Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section.
FAQ
Who can join the competition?
Any teams from secondary or high schools from the European Union or EU Candidate Countries between 15 and 19 years old. A team consists of 3 students (from one school/country or different countries), supported by their teacher/s as mentor/s. Each team has its leader – the student responsible for carrying out a part of the task and for coordination of the teamwork. The teacher does not necessarily have to be the student’s teacher directly. However, he/she must be employed at the same school.
Please, notice that both students and teachers have to be able to communicate well in English.
Can one school submit just one or maybe more projects?
One school can send multiple projects, each team can send one application (but one teacher can supervise many teams).
What about the main prize?
The winning teams will have the opportunity to participate in a scientific trip to CERN as a main prize of the Competition. Each student will be accompanied by his/her teacher during the trip. The visit will be held June the 12th 2018 (any other details will be described when finalized). The students and the teachers from the winning teams will be invited to participate in the event and the teachers will be responsible for the students’ wellbeing during the trip.
But are we able to solve the task?
The proposed tasks are challenging but not impossible to solve. You will find suggestions, tips and examples in the problem description files (for each task).
Should the project be in English?
Yes, all submissions must be made in English. It is required for the students and the teachers to communicate well in English.
How long should the solved-problem draft be?
There is no formal page limit on the report. However, the project summary must be max 1500 characters (+ illustrations, pictures or similar). The total volume of all files submitted by one team should not exceed 55 MB.
(More information on this is on the Submission Guide in the Rules of STEM4youth Open Student Competition).
What file formats do you accept?
The project summary should be PDF.
The project may be PDF or ZIP file.
The student consent forms must be PDF (scan of signed document saved as PDF).
Larger files (like videos) can be may be submitted as links to free, publically available, file repositories (like YouTube) provided that no authorization or account creation is required to access the file.
Shall I register my team prior to submission?
No, earlier registration is not required. The team just submit its project before the deadline. The same project may be submitted several time – only the last submitted version will be evaluated.
Do you have a specific format of the consent of participants for the competition?
Yes. Before submission the teacher – the mentor of the student team leader must get the written, signed consents of the students, whose work he/she submits for the competition within the STEM4youht project. In case of minors the written, signed consents of the students’ legal guardians must also be obtained by the teacher.
Please consult Student consent files (for adult students and under aged students).
Can you explain me the evaluation criteria?
The projects will be evaluated on following criteria:
1.Correctness of the solutions to the problems posed
2.Quality, consistency and depth of reasoning and formulation, verification and generalization of hypothesis and conclusions.
3.Clear description of the steps/tasks carried out in the project and of the results obtained
4.The effectiveness of cooperation in the team, level of integration of team member contributions.
Thus, for any proposal we requires that your teams to:
a. describe a problem and documenting the proposal of a solution
b. state a question, formulate an hypothesis and showing ways to test the it
Please note that the competitors will be notified if they pass to the 2nd stage or not. No other feedback will be given to individual projects.
(More information on The process of evaluating the projects in the Rules of STEM4youth Open Student Competition).
How we additionally assist the students participating in the competition?
We have prepared a dedicated topic category on our Forum:
discourse.stem4youth.pl/c/stem4youth-competition
You will find there special topics connected with all the projects. You can ask us there any kind of questions regarding them. Additional information from us will be put there as well.
When student teams are decided, we will create additional, private topics where the team members will be able to discuss their problems privately.
Seems fair enough. If I have any other questions, may I contact you?
Sure, we are happy to help. Please, look at the following contacts:
Dr. Mirosław Brzozowy
STEM4youth technical Manager
Faculty of Physics; Warsaw University of Technology
Koszykowa 75; 00-662 Warsaw (Poland)
e-mail: contact@stem4youth.pl
