Background
It was suggested last year that an evaluation of the OHI/O 2018 Hackathon be my practicum project, even while the 2017 OHI/O Hackathon was in the planing stages. That hackathon was a success and attending it helped solidify my plans for this year’s practicum – and helped identify some problems to be solved with this instructional project. My client will be Julia Armstrong, Chair of the 2018 OHI/O Hackathon, and the product will be an evaluative report of this year’s event on October 27-28.
Dr. Correia and I met with Julia Armstrong in May 2018. I pitched my interest in doing the project again as my Practicum by presenting the major survey results from last year’s hackathon. I did this by memory, fortunately, as my fully-charged computer produced a completely blank screen a few minutes before we were meeting Julia. In addition to the pitch, I produced and delivered an additional coding document that clarified participant attitudes abut the judging aspect of the event, something Julia had a particular interest in.
For the Practicum experience, surveys similar to last year’s surveys will be conducted and the evaluative report, with additional coding documents, will be delivered to Julia after analysis is complete.
This year’s report will build on last year’s Hackathon experience, and should gain from the following improvements:
- I have more experience with evaluations
- Having gone through an actual event will help me know what to expect – I won’t miss chances for interviews due to scheduling mishaps
Problem Statement and Project Vision
Julia is an informal learning SME in addition to the Hackathon Chair and needs an evaluative report on the 2018 OHI/O Hackathon to capture participants’ thoughts about a variety of factors:
- reasons for attending
- ways participants discovered the event’s details (time & place … word-of-mouth, billboards, etc)
- the utility of Mentors and Sponsors
- usefulness of previous inspiration & ideas vs. attending without any
- new tools used, refined and discovered at the event
- food quality & room comfort
- plans on staying for the entire event
- reasons for not attending judging events on the last day
- overall satisfaction.
Previous hackathons had not captured participant comments and suggestions. This Report will offer insight into this Hackathon’s efficacy in those areas and informal learning in general.
Historical Foundations
Hackathons, makeathons and other informal learning events often produce tangible evidence of learning – deliverables and feelings of accomplishment that are otherwise difficult to measure. “There is a tremendous interest in making education more engaging and interesting to students” (Nandi & Manderbach, 2017), and this type of event offers opportunities to capture the efficacy of these approaches. In past years, the OHI/O Hackathon had used source-code commits to gauge participation by team members, but this data, gleaned from a log of activity, wasn’t used in the 2017 event.
Findings from the Literature Review
Hackathons can be used for learning, and also to rapidly come up with solutions to problems in a particular business, government or social contexts. These “cause hackathons” champion idea generation, and as a “showcase of epic organizational skills” (Buchner, 2017), “tangible market/career value” is generated. Value in the form problem solutions are deliverables that anyone could advocate for.
Informal learning that is generated at these events is powerful. The hackathon phenomenon has emerged as “an effective approach to encouraging innovation” and is increasingly being studied as a platform for learning and engagement (Briscoe & Mulligan, 2014). Boustedt, Eckerdal, McCartney, Sanders Thomas & Zander (2011) state many different types of informal learning – experiential, workplace, self-directed and leanring in informal environments (p. 61). Their study focused specifically on the differences between formal and informal learning in the computing environment, where technology changes so rapidly that formal learning – finding a school or program, enrolling in it, finishing the course of study and getting the credential – is inefficient.
Solutions for the Problem
A Report presented to the Client after the event, with several questions coded to uncover participant attitudes (questions chosen from the client’s preferences), will hopefully offer her insight and additional direction for future hackathon events.
References:
Briscoe, G., Mulligan, C. (2014). Digital Innovation: The hackathon phenomenon.
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.
Trainer, E. H., Kalyanasundaram, A., Chaihirunkarn, C., & Herbsleb, J. D. (2016, February). How to hackathon: Socio-technical tradeoffs in brief, intensive collocation. In proceedings of the 19th ACM conference on computer-supported cooperative work & social computing (pp. 1118-1130). ACM.