BYTE Challenge - from competition to STEM platform

The BYTE Challenge is a project of the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (German Informatics Society) which was held for the first time from March to June 2021 as a Computer Science competition for students from all over Germany. More than 800 students from grades 6 to 10 from over 80 schools participated. This report describes the exploratory evaluation of BYTE’21 and gives an outlook for BYTE’22: BYTE courses are equally feasible at preparatory high schools (Gymnasium) and other secondary schools (Oberschule), whereas the results reflect interindividual differences in performance. The course materials is suitable for students of all school types starting from the age of 10. Heterogeneous prior knowledge is balanced out by the course materials. Most participants were able to complete the courses well, found the topics interesting and the difficulty appropriate. The courses on artificial intelligence and game design were particularly popular. Registrations of entire classes are in great demand. Results, feedback and experience were used to expand the challenge into a permanent STEM platform in 2022 for individual pupils and entire school classes.