HCL Launches 2nd Edition of HCL Jigsaw – India’s Premier Critical Reasoning Platform to Assess Problem Solving Skills Among School Students

Delhi : HCL, a US $10.5 billion global conglomerate, today announced that registrations are now open for the second edition of HCL Jigsaw, India’s premier critical reasoning platform. HCL Jigsaw echoes the focus on critical thinking as outlined in the New Education Policy. It is devised to identify and award India’s Top Young Problem Solvers through a multi-layered evaluation process. HCL Jigsaw assesses school students in grades 6 to 9 on key 21st century skills including research, critical thinking and communication, and helps them apply these to solve real-world challenges.

The competition follows close on the heels of the first edition which received overwhelming appreciation from participants, parents, teachers, and principals. Close to 7000 students from over 1900 schools registered for the first edition. The competition was feted as “really interesting” and “the only one of its kind” by the participants, encouraging them think out of the box. The jury was also impressed at the quality of creative thinking and idea generation demonstrated by young students during the course of the competition.

Interested students or schools can register themselves for the second edition of the Pan-India competition at www.hcljigsaw.com, by November 26, 2021. The competition will take place virtually in three rounds – Qualifiers (December 3 – 8, 2021), Semifinals on December 18 and Finale on December 19, 2021). Winners of HCL Jigsaw 2.0 will earn gift prizes and gadgets worth up to Rs. 1 lakh, each along with learning opportunity at HCL Engineering and Innovation labs.

Commenting on the initiative, Sundar Mahalingam, President Strategy at HCL Corporation said, “We are excited to return with the second edition of HCL Jigsaw in response to the encouraging feedback from schools and students alike for the inaugural round. Nurturing critical-thinking skills is essential for young minds to thrive in a rapidly evolving world, and teachers and schools play an important role in this journey. While HCL Jigsaw is designed to expose students to situations that require problem-solving and critical thinking capabilities, starting with this edition we also plan to help educators become better facilitators. Select schools will receive access to trainings and workshops for their teachers to help pave the way towards enhanced 21st century teacher skills and, in turn, 21st century learners.”

HCL Jigsaw will assess participating students on 10 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

Three stages of HCL Jigsaw 2.0 will include:

Qualifier stage – involving a Pan-India online Olympiad during December 3 – 8, 2021.
Students participating in this will get multiple choice questions, each attributing to a facet of critical reasoning and problem-solving.
The assessment will be adaptive and the questions for the competition have been curated following international best standards with the aim of evaluating students within their specific age-groups.
All students from this round will receive personalized assessment report of their performance on each skill, giving them a roadmap for improvement and development areas.

Semifinals – Top 20 percentile from each grade will qualify for this stage, to be held on December 18, 2021.
Students in each grade will be grouped in teams during this stage and will work in a virtual mystery room to creatively solve a real-world problem.

Finale – Total 36 students will compete in this stage, to be held on December 19, 2021.
Students will compete individually during the finale and present their plan to solve a theme-based real-world problem to an expert jury.
Top three students from each grade (total 12 students) will win the title of “India’s Top Young Problem Solvers” and will earn gift prizes and gadgets worth up to Rs. 1 lakh, each.
Winners will also get learning opportunity at HCL Engineering and Innovation labs.
In a first, HCL Jigsaw will also recognize schools who actively participate and support in building the community of future problems-solvers for our country – with the title of ‘HCL Partner Schools’. These institutions will receive, among other benefits, access to online learning platform on problem solving and workshop for their teachers conducted by expert faculty from Shiv Nadar University or Shiv Nadar Schools, Delhi NCR. These workshops will train teachers in areas of design thinking and innovation, fostering scientific inquiry, drama tools, giving effective feedback, designing personalized pathways, and more.