A hackathon usually lasts for 24 hours or more. It’s a group that meets for the purpose of creating something. The energy, creativity and sustained concentration that is generated when like-minded people pursue their own projects in an intense atmosphere makes for an event like no other. The genesis of Ohio State’s event is described below:
“The OHI/O program was created in 2013 with the goal of fostering a tech culture at Ohio State and its surrounding communities. The program has created Ohio State’s first hackathon, as well as spin-off events including the hardware-focused Makeathon, ultimately providing students the opportunity to learn and build with real technologies outside of the classroom. OHI/O is a student driven, self-sustaining platform that now runs Ohio’s largest hackathon, bringing together over 700+ students from various schools nationwide with the support of over 20 industry partners.” – Dr. Arnab Nandi, Retrieved from: https://www.flickr.com/people/hackohio/
An energetic HackOHI/O video from 2016 can be found here. Danny Dotson provided a youtube channel with several descriptive videos here.
An article on the Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) website about the 2013 hackathon can be read here.
Reference:
Nandi, A., & Mandernach, M. (2016, February). Hackathons as an informal learning platform. In Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education (pp. 346-351). ACM.