Scholar’s Cup contest promotes creativity — Organiser
The World Scholar’s Cup competition which is meant to foster cooperative culture among students from different backgrounds will hold in Nigeria between October 21 and 22 for the first time.
The contest brings together over 20,000 students from about 50 countries every year.
Students between the ages of 11 and 16 would take part in the junior category while those that are 15 years of age and above, who are mostly in SSS 1 to 3, would form the senior category.
The event’s organizer and International Program Director, Joseph Willard Harr, said the event would be hosted by the Nigerian Tulip International College (NTIC) and would provide an opportunity for scholars to promote their sense of innovation, improve community building and ability of science researching.
“Scholars in different parts of the world have the ability to build friendly relations and continue to interact with each other on important issues,” he said.
He said students were to obtain registration forms at scholarscup.org/ calendar.
Teams consisting of three students each would participate in four events but there are no limited number of teams per school.
The events included team debate, collaborative writing, scholars challenge and scholar’s bowl. For team debate, each team would debate three times on motions across all the subjects, from policy to poetry.
Each team member would be given time to speak and research his argument with full access to the internet. After each round, winning teams face other winners and nonwinners face other non-winners. The teams with least experience would have the opportunity to gain more and everyone ends up better.
He said in collaborative writing, team members would be given six statements each from different subjects and asked to choose one to argue for or against. Each member would have to choose a different topic and would be given enough time to compose most persuasive essay.
For scholars challenge, members would make multiple choices and can mark more than one answer per question. The fewer answer a member mark, the more points he earns if he is correct.
He said in scholar’s bowl, every team would be in the theater. Every team has a clicker that connects to the scoring computer and every question is harder than the one before. Each team would work together to solve analytic questions and multimedia challenges. Teams would click their answers before time runs out. Questions would be answered in 1530 seconds but rapid fire questions would be answered in three seconds.
Mr. Harr said scholars would have the chance to qualify for the 2018 Global Round of their choice next summer and subsequently for the Tournament of Champions at Yale University, US.