HCL Jigsaw – India’s Premier Critical Reasoning Platform – Hosts Qualifier Round

Business Wire India
HCL Jigsaw, India's Premier Critical Reasoning Platform designed to assess important 21^st century skills in young (Grade 6 to 9) students, announced the successful completion of Round One or the Qualifier Round of the Pan-India competition. Held virtually from July 8^th – 13^th 2021, the Qualifier round assessed participants through a 40-minute Olympiad that evaluated students using adaptive multiple-choice questions, attributing to different facets of critical reasoning and problem-solving skills. Close to 7000 students representing 2000 schools from across the country registered to participate in the first edition of HCL Jigsaw. 
 
Students from 28 states and union territories participated in the Qualifier Round and 65% of these were from ten major cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, NOIDA, Lucknow, Gurugram, Kolkata and Pune. More than half of the participating students were from schools affiliated to the CBSE board. Other boards including CISCE, IB, Cambridge, and State boards were equally represented along with few students from Open schools and special schools.
 
Sharing his experience, Chinmay Matapurkar, Grade 6 from Delhi Public School said, “I found the Critical Reasoning Olympiad quite engaging and thought-provoking. The quality of questions was good and the process of submitting the responses was easy. Round one had a mix of brain teasers and analytical questions which was good. I look forward to getting selected for the finale and more theme-based challenges.”
 
While all participating students will receive detailed assessment reports of their performance on each skill, giving them a road map for improvement and development areas, top 20 percentile from each grade, will qualify for HCL Jigsaw Finale. Details of the qualifying students will be announced on July 15 and the Finale will take place virtually on July 31^st and August 1^st, 2021.
 
The two-stage finale will involve students working on a real-world, theme-based problem statement and finding creative solutions for the same. Students in each grade will be grouped in teams during stage one and will work in a virtual mystery room to creatively solve a problem. Total 36 students will then move to stage two of the Finale, where they will compete individually and present their plan to solve a real-world case scenario to an expert jury. Top three students from each grade (total 12 students) will win the title of “India’s Top Problem Solvers”.
 
Each winner of HCL Jigsaw will earn gift prizes and gadgets worth up to Rs. 1 lakh. They will also get learning opportunities at HCL Engineering and Innovation labs.
 
HCL Jigsaw is designed to assess participating students on 10 significant parameters under three primary attributes that can be characterized as key components of the problem-solving process. These include: -

• Research Skills – this would assess students on how well they are able to define a problem, formulate an investigation/action plan and collect and organize information
• Communication Process – assess the student’s ability to structure information in a coherent manner, and understand the context and purpose of any information given to them
• Thinking Critically – this attribute will assess if a student is able to interpret the information accurately, evaluate claims and draw conclusions