Competition: Design the Student Challenge for Day of AI Australia
Prize: The one (1) winning Eligible Entrant (team or individual) will win $5,000. Total prize pool is $5,000.
(Open to UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering students only)
Background: What is the Day of AI Australia
The Day of AI is a full day of highly interactive lessons that introduce the basics of AI literacy to students in Years 5 to 10.
The hands-on, creative and easy-to-teach activities are designed to be delivered by any teacher and the program is completely free.
The Day of AI has been developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and i2Learning. Day of AI Australia partners UNSW, CSIRO and CS in Schools to tailor content for Australian students and teachers. In 2023 more than 18,000 Australian students participated in the Day of AI.
In 2024, Day of AI Australia is partnering with UNSW’s School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) for an exciting opportunity for CSE students to develop a participant challenge as a key component of the Day’s activities.
You can read more about the Day of AI Australia here.
The Student Challenge
The Day of AI is a full day of highly interactive lessons that introduce the basics of AI literacy to students in Years 5 to 10.
The hands-on, creative and easy-to-teach activities are designed to be delivered by any teacher and the program is completely free.
The Day of AI has been developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and i2Learning. Day of AI Australia partners UNSW, CSIRO and CS in Schools to tailor content for Australian students and teachers. In 2023 more than 18,000 Australian students participated in the Day of AI.
In 2024, Day of AI Australia is partnering with UNSW’s School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) for an exciting opportunity for CSE students to develop a participant challenge as a key component of the Day’s activities.
You can read more about the Day of AI Australia here.
Your Task: Design the 2024 Student Challenge
The Day of AI student challenge aims to ignite the curiosity and creativity of young minds, challenging them to use what they have learned through the program to develop AI solutions to address real-world issues or opportunities.
Your task is to design a challenge that is engaging, educational, and tailored to the abilities and interests of primary and secondary students (Years 5 – 10), asking them to develop an idea that uses AI technology in some way.
Some things to keep in mind:
- We encourage all students and schools to engage with the Day of AI program – the challenge needs to be inclusive and accessible for students across Australia and from a broad range of backgrounds, experiences and levels of access to technology.
- The challenge needs to work for upper primary (Years 5-6) as well as lower and middle secondary school students (Years 7-8 and 9-10).
- The challenge needs to be workable within an hour block of time (the Challenge is the last “lesson” in the overall day program).
- The exercise needs to be engaging and exciting for the students!
- Students should complete the challenge in pairs.
- Assessment of the competition needs to be feasible and scalable.
Your entry:
Please address the following components in your submission:
- Determine the parameters for the Student Challenge, what is the problem the students are working to solve?
- Propose guidelines for the competition that include:
- How students should structure their response
- Determining a scaffold for submissions to follow (e.g. some prompt questions or similar)
- Encourage ethical considerations in AI solution development
- Encourage innovative thinking and team work
- Demonstrate their understanding of AI and what they have learned in the Day of AI lessons
- Develop an evaluation process and criteria. The process needs to be feasible and scalable. Your entry must include a review matrix/scoring template (this will not be included in the word count). Evaluation criteria might touch on the following areas:
- Creativity and Innovation
- Practicality and Feasibility
- Teamwork and Collaboration
- Presentation Skills.
- Your entry must include name and UNSW student email address (@student.unsw.edu.au). For team entries of 2 or 3 people, provide names and student numbers for all team members.
You may enter as an individual or a team of up to three people (all team members must meet the eligibility criteria, see full terms and conditions below).
Your entry must include name and UNSW student email address (@student.unsw.edu.au). For team entries of 2 or 3 people, provide names and student numbers for all team members.
Your submission will be two files: Details of your idea (PDF) and review matrix/scoring template.
Details of your idea (PDF) should be no more than one page and must address the above criteria. Maximum word count for the PDF: 800.
Both the Details of your idea (PDF) and review matrix/scoring template are submitted via the Google Form linked below ).
Submit your entry by 11.00am AEDT Thursday 22 February 2024.
If you have any questions or need more information please contact hello@tdmg8.sg-host.com
Further details
You can review the 2023 lessons including the 2023 Student Challenge here.
Please note that all the lessons will be updated for 2024 and will include a lesson on How AI is being used in industries in Australia as well as a lesson on LLMs and chatbots.
2023 competition summary information
Students were divided into pairs. Students spent 10 minutes in their pairs brainstorming the following question and coming up with their AI solution, based on what they have learned during the day:
Years 5 & 6; 7 & 8 – How can AI be used to improve something in your local school?
Years 9 & 10 – How can AI be used to improve something in your local community?
Teachers chose between the two options below. Tips for recording the video entries were provided.
Option 1: Single entry per class option | Option 2: Multiple entries per class option |
Ask each pair to write their AI solution on a whiteboard or butcher’s paper (a sentence or two will be enough). As a class the students vote on the best AI solution. Facilitate a whole-class brainstorm session to flesh out the winning solution. Keep the session short and snappy, using the questions below to guide the discussion. Once you have workshopped these questions as a class, the winning pair of students outline their thinking by addressing the entry questions in a short video (max 3 mins). | Every pair in the class is welcome to enter the competition, and under this option it does not have to go to a vote on which pair has the winning idea. Every pair in the class needs to outline their thinking by addressing the entry questions in a short video (max 3 mins). The video should be recorded on a mobile phone. |
To help structure the video recording, ask one student to record the winning pair and another student to ask these guide questions, which the winning pair should answer:
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