Teacher’s guide

The AIIO and FARIO are to be sat at school with teacher supervision.

Registration

If you have students who were invited to sit these competitions, you will receive an email soon with further details. If you have not been contacted two weeks prior to any of the competitions, please contact us.

Supervision on the day

Please provide the supervising teacher(s) with the following information:

Before the contest

• On the morning of the contest day, the supervising teacher should print the login details, and optionally the contest papers. Students must not read the contest papers until they have started the contest by pressing the “Start!” button on the contest website.
• Before the contest begins, confirm that students do not have any forbidden materials, and are aware of which sites they may and may not access (as outlined in the Contest Environment section of the rules)).

Starting the contest

1. Distribute the login details to the students and instruct students to log into the contest system with the login details. Instruct students NOT to press the red “Start!” button until instructed to do so.
2. Confirm that all students are logged in and ready to begin.
3. Instruct all students to press the “Start!” button and begin the contest. The statements for each problem can now be downloaded from the contest website. Students may now turn over the printed papers (if provided). If students are sitting the contest from home, do not send them the paper.

During the contest

• Proctors should do their best to ensure students adhere to the contest rules.
• Proctors must not assist students with programming related matters (e.g. “why is my code crashing?”, “how do I write a for-loop?”).
• The AIIO and FARIO are 4 hours long. Proctors may wish to give a warning at 10 minutes to remind students to submit their code before the contest ends.

After the contest

• When all students have finished, remind all students not to publicly discuss the contest until:
  • Tuesday 18 February 2025 for the AIIO
  • Wednesday 12 March 2025 for the FARIO

Local technical issues

In the event of any technical failures, students should do their best to continue working on the contest. No extra time will be awarded for technical failures outside the control of the contest organisers (e.g. computer freezes, internet cuts out).

Contest site failures

In the event of a contest website failure (e.g. the website goes down), students should continue to work on the problems on their local computers. Although judging feedback is unavailable, students are still able to write code, or work on solving the problems on paper.

Once the issue has been resolved, extra time may be awarded to students who were adversely affected. To request extra time, the student must send a clarification through the contest site detailing how they were affected by the technical failure, and the amount of extra time they are requesting.

If the contest window ends before the technical issues are resolved, students should send a copy of their work to their supervising teacher, who should send it to the Informatics Director of Training or another contact at the AMT.