This is where you will find answers to frequently asked questions about the USITCC.


Can I use Generative AI (ChatGPT, Google Bard, etc....)?

Statement Regarding use of Generative AI

We—the USITCC Conference Committee and the Foundation for Information Technology Education (FITE)—recognize the impressive growth, application, and overall utility of AI in shortening the time to completion of projects both professionally and academically. The use of Generative has increased dramatically in recent years. Students, employees, and organizations are leveraging tools such as ChatGPT, Bard, DALL-E, Midjourney, and DeepMind to supplement their own skillsets and produce greater volumes of work.

With that said, we and our cooperative organizations jointly decided to prohibit/ban the use of Generative AI from the 2024 USITCC competition.

The competitions at USITCC are primarily focused on and tailored to the knowledge bases and skillsets of undergraduate students from 2 & 4-year schools. The purpose of these competitions is to gauge, test, and present appropriate challenges for this level of student understanding and the competitions also allow students to detect their own deficiencies and strengths. Students will need to possess a solid understanding of the fields they are competing in on their own merits to truly discover where their strengths and weaknesses lie, such that they may better develop themselves for the professional world in which they are seeking careers.

Therefore, usage of Generative AI to assist in the answering, production, and development of student submissions is prohibited from the competition overall. Violation of this ban may result in the forfeiture of the competitor in that competition. We reserve the right to examine competition related network traffic data during this event. Certain web domain access may be blocked as well.

What are the competitions like?

In a word - exciting! You will be competing head-to-head with some of the best information systems students in the country. The competitions are designed to accessible to all students while pushing advanced students to the limit. The majority of individuals writing the problem statements have real-world experience that push you to apply your classroom skills to solve realistic IS problems - just like you will all be doing upon graduation!

Competitions will be held in large contest "labs" (think large lab classroom). The labs will be outfitted to accommodate approximately 150-200 competitors simultaneously competing in each event.

When you arrive at the contest lab, you will be assigned an anonymous username and password that will be used to submit your solution to our contest submission server--similar to the learning management system you probably use at your own college or university. The contest submission server is only accessible from the isolated contest network in the contest lab - helping to ensure the integrity of all submissions. You will receive a password to access this secure wifi network when you check in to the contest.

Getting checked in and set up will likely take 15-30 minutes depending on the number of participants in each competition. Once all competitors are checked in, you will all have the balance of the competition time to compete the problem statement.

All competitions except PC Troubleshooting and the Security Challenge can have up to two students on a team--PC Troubleshooting and Security are individual events.

For PC Troubleshooting and Security, all participants will complete a qualifying exam that may take up to 1 hour. The exams are graded in real time by the system, and the results are shown on a live leaderboard that will be projected outside the lab, creating an exciting environment for friends and teachers to cheer you on as you race to the top of the scoreboard. At the conclusion of the testing period, the top 10 scorers will proceed on to the hands-on final round.

To view the contest schedule of events, click here! Note that during each time slot at least two contest events are simultaneously in progress. It is only possible to compete in one event per time slot--for example, you may choose to compete in either Database Design or Microsoft Office, but not both.

Ambitious students can participate in up to four competition events, and there is no extra cost for competing - so throw your hat in the ring!


How many students can stay in one hotel room?

The room block includes a large number of rooms with two beds.  Therefore, each room can accommodate up to four students.


When will I/we be able to register for the conference?

The online registration system will open in late Jan-early Feb 2020.