The Role of Online Contest Management Systems in Digital Learning

The shift to digital learning doesn’t happen overnight. Even with the abundance of responsive online courses and cloud-based learning tools, when it comes to self-paced education, there is still a great deal of resistance. For many tech-savvy learners, it’s very unclear why they should keep showing up for tests when it’s so easy to pass all of them online instead.

In most cases, it’s simply about the differences in accepting new ideas. According to the Rogers Adoption Curve, whenever a new technology is introduced, approximately 16% of the people in any organisation will use it only if forced. Rogers calls these individuals “laggards”. The second important reason why educators are reluctant to embrace a full switch to digital is that they are concerned with the lack of oversight. Gamification and video-based training can certainly jazz up any learning course, but without structured educational support, tracking student progress can be a challenge.

But guess what? Technology has great solutions for this problem! One of these solutions is online awards management software – an easy-to-use tool that not only helps you build engagement through contests but also provides capabilities for extensive scoring and evaluation.

How you can use a contest as a learning tool

Education is not about winning or losing… it’s about learning. The same is true of student contests. Whether it’s a team project or an individual online learning competition, these kinds of activities work great in the context of value-driven education.

Here are the key benefits that students get by learning through competitions:

• Explore the specifics of a profession. Every student is a prospective expert and employee, which means students should be able to adapt their knowledge to a specific workplace. Contests help young learners get an inside look at the profession. For instance, finance students can be encouraged to develop their own fintech projects related to blockchain or mobile payments and present them in a student startup contest. Not only do they tap into a profession, but they also get to understand the latest trends and how to work with these trends.
• Build a link between profession and culture. Knowledge doesn’t really exist without a cultural context. If you dive deep into participation terms for contests like the Taiwan International Student Design Competition, you’ll notice that the cultural line is really important. Through involvement in such initiatives, students can both test their skills in product/visual design and explore the role of their future occupations within their culture.
• Skyrocket your problem-solving skills. Online tools for learning contests require students to be flexible with how they approach and handle tasks. Let’s say that a student wants to apply for an online photo contest. In this case, it might be relevant to learn how they can easily resize images or convert them into different formats.

Types of online contests for students

The age of students, the types of learning contest software, and the ultimate contest goals are three main factors that dictate the choice of an event format. Check out the top three types of online contests for students:

1. Concept submission competitions: Whether it’s a video, a story, or a piece of artwork, any submission that a student creates can be evaluated based on a set of criteria in the framework of a concept submission competition. Usually, such projects are related to a specific theme or subject.

Example: Architecture at Zero — Students must design two buildings and indicate zero net energy (ZNE) performance for each of them.

2. Solution-based competitions: One of the most popular examples of solution-based contests is a hackathon. A sprint-like event that brings together teams of coders, hackathons are focused on solving a real-life problems through programming. Solution-based events teach students how to apply their skills in practice, often under stressful conditions or within a limited time frame.

Example: Brain Hackathon — Students develop solutions that aim to link the brain and computers. The winner gets a seat on a team at the IEEE SMC (a very popular international conference on cybernetics).

3. Fairs: Participants present their projects, ideas, or solutions, which are then evaluated either by peers or by a professional panel of judges. Startup idea contests are a perfect fit here.

Example: Google Science Fair – An online science and engineering competition for students aged 13-18.

How to use awards management software to enable digital learning

Now that you know the perks of online contests for students, you may want to understand the “hows.”  The best way to handle academic contest activities in a digital world is through the use of awards management software (AMS). Depending on your goals, you can choose a platform with custom modules for entry submission, voting, analytics, and much more.

Here are the tools that an AWS for learning purposes should have:

• Submissions portal. Whether it’s a contest limited to one school or a huge international competition, using a single platform as a gateway for the incoming entries makes things much easier.
• Personalised messaging. Customised email templates help you support personalised interaction with students and judges as well as communicate any news or updates.
• Location-independent deployment. Distance learning is the father of all major trends related to digitalised education. With a cloud-based scholarship management system, it is possible to submit and score applications from anywhere, at any time. This is a great asset, especially if you’re running a competition between schools or if international experts are involved in the judging process.
• Automated judging. Professional student contests are usually judged by teachers or industry experts. Whether you are an abstract reviewer, a judge, or a contest organiser, AWS helps you manage the desired number of categories, customise criteria, send automatic invites, and receive assignment confirmations as easily as possible.

Conclusion

The evolution of digital learning has introduced many new tools that transform the way people grow professionally. From online exams to full-scale international contests, educators work hard to keep up with the lightning-fast speed of educational progress. An efficient study contests software is a great tool for making digital learning truly innovative.