Abstract:

COVID19 Pandemic has imposed severe limitations both on student engagement and on international exchanges of students and staff. While instructional designs during the pandemic have explored a diversity of methods going beyond traditional online lecture and including such formats as flipped classroom, co-teaching and problem-based learning, only a few authors have reported on applying the hackathon as an instructional design approach in online learning during COVID19. Despite hackathons having a large potential as an instructional strategy for stimulating student engagement and collaboration in teams, their application as a formal teaching approach and integration into curricula in higher education is less prevalent.

This paper reports on applying the format of an online hackathon as a collaborative and inclusive instructional design approach, in which university students from different countries and different academic backgrounds came together for two days to jointly work on solutions in the field of digital education. The online hackathon described in this paper was organised as a sub-event (challenge) at the annual European hackathon DigiEduHack2021, and aimed at developing innovative solutions using emerging technologies for holistic and engaging learning experiences. The key research question addressed in this paper is how to design online hackathons to enhance student engagement and international collaboration in student teams in the context of distance learning and teaching such as during COVID19 pandemic. An exploratory case study was conducted to evaluate the online hackathon challenge as an instructional approach, which included the observations and the analysis of the event by the challenge facilitators and the online survey with n = 57 students (53% female, 47% male) which was conducted at the end of the hackathon to receive feedback from the participants.

This paper describes the design of the hackathon challenge, its integration into curricula of participating university courses, the implementation of the challenge during the European hackathon event in November 2021, the results of the hackathon in terms of solutions submitted by student teams and the insights from the exploratory case study drawing on analytical observations and survey results. The results of the exploratory study show that students not only enjoyed the learning experience during the hackathon but also recommended to include online hackathons in higher education as a voluntary activity and as a way to train and find talents. The participants valued the inclusiveness of the hackathon, enjoyed designing new solutions for problems with real-world applications and reported on growth in competencies such as digital literacy, problem-solving and personal networking. However, the observations revealed some challenges in forming international teams and collaborating at distance during the hackathon. Therefore the paper outlines possible design solutions for preparing students for international teamwork. To enhance the educational value of online hackathons as part of formal instruction in higher education, the paper ends with suggestions for integrating hackathons into university courses together with possible areas for future design and research.

Keywords:

Hackathon, challenge, collaboration, problem-based learning, intercultural teams.