Bebras Contest and Digital Competence Assessment: Analysis and Framework.

The article is made of two parts. The first part discusses the importance of informal education environments supported by IT/ICT in students’ learning, followed by reports of some international competitions and the role they have in improving students’ interest and use of Informatics and related disciplines. At the end of the section, it describes the Bebras contest, an international competition supporting students’ Information and Communication Technology competences with emphasis on cross discipline competences, which are useful to solve real life problems. In the second part of the article, the outcomes of a research study on the features of a framework for digital competence assessment are reported. Based on this, some criticisms emerging from the analysis of the answers that students gave to a questionnaire built on the guidelines of the mentioned framework are analysed. They are integrated by the comments that teachers, colleagues and researchers made on the structure of the hypothesized framework. At last, a new model for digital literacy assessment is proposed. In the conclusion, the necessary elements for making the last framework effective are outlined and its suitability for the construction of the yearly questionnaire of the Bebras contest is discussed.