Experimental, ad hoc, online, inter-university student e-contest during the pandemic – Lessons learned

Purpose: We analyze the effect of the current pandemic on students e-contests. Method: We compare the e-contest with the 10 previous editions of the same but face-to-face contest. Statistical and NLP analysis are applied. Conclusions: Apparently the competition did not suffer because of being a virtual one; the basic interconnectivity means arise no serious technical issue. Disadvantages found: the interconnectivity is more limited than for the face-to-face case; online jury-competitors interactivity is poorer than face-to-face interactivity; human factors, higher uncertainties in the organization process, and less time to spend in the process for the local organizers are major limiting factors; concerns on the participation and evaluation fairness are higher; involuntary gender discrimination seems lower, but persists; there are serious concerns related to privacy, including differential privacy; peculiarities of the presented topics and of the evaluation process emerged, but it is unclear if they are related to the online nature of the competition, to the extra stress on the participants during the pandemic, to other factors, or are random. Some conclusions may be valid for the analyzed case only, yet some are general enough for being worth reporting. A preprint was published in ArXiv.