Turning the Classroom Inside Out: Investigating Flipped Classroom for Programming Olympiad in High School

The Brazilian Olympiad in Informatics is an annual competition aimed at basic education students, focused on solving challenges through programming languages. This study presents a controlled experiment conducted in a free preparatory course offered to high school students from a public school in Ceará, Brazil,, aiming to evaluate the impact of the Flipped Classroom methodology in comparison to the traditional approach. Theoretical content was delivered remotely, while practical activities took place in person. The results showed improvements in learning, increased student engagement, and strong performance in the Olympiad, with three students qualifying for the state phase and one for the national phase.