skip to main content
10.1145/3472688.3472700acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesicgjConference Proceedingsconference-collections
short-paper

Organizing online hackathons for newcomers to a scientific community – Lessons learned from two events

Published: 02 August 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Acquiring computing skills is essential not only to work in computer science but also because many impactful discoveries occur at the interface between traditional scientific disciplines and computing and data science. Time-bounded events such as hackathons can provide an opportunity for newcomers to experience programming firsthand in a collaborative environment. Just providing access to computational resources, however, is not sufficient because newcomers will likely require guidance and support in order for them to perceive their participation in a hackathon as a positive experience propelling them to future success in the subject. We have developed a hackathon format for this purpose that we have successfully applied during in-person events for two years. The global pandemic of 2020, however, forced us to move towards a virtual format. In this paper, we report on our experience making this transition. We will specifically elaborate on two online events, discuss successes and failures and provide suggestions for hackathon organizers.

References

[1]
Nataly Birbeck, Shaun Lawson, Kellie Morrissey, Tim Rapley, and Patrick Olivier. 2017. Self Harmony: rethinking hackathons to design and critique digital technologies for those affected by self-harm. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 146–157.
[2]
Ben Busby, August Matthew Lesko, 2016. Closing gaps between open software and public data in a hackathon setting: user-centered software prototyping. F1000Research 5(2016).
[3]
David Cobham, Kevin Jacques, Carl Gowan, Jack Laurel, Scott Ringham, 2017. From appfest to entrepreneurs: using a hackathon event to seed a university student-led enterprise. In 11th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference.
[4]
Jeanette Falk Olesen and Kim Halskov. 2020. 10 Years of Research With and On Hackathons. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. 1073–1088.
[5]
Kiev Gama, Breno Alencar, Filipe Calegario, André Neves, and Pedro Alessio. 2018. A Hackathon Methodology for Undergraduate Course Projects. In 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE). IEEE, 1–9.
[6]
Daniela Huppenkothen, Anthony Arendt, David W Hogg, Karthik Ram, Jacob T VanderPlas, and Ariel Rokem. 2018. Hack weeks as a model for data science education and collaboration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, 36(2018), 8872–8877.
[7]
Lilly Irani. 2015. Hackathons and the making of entrepreneurial citizenship. Science, Technology, & Human Values 40, 5 (2015), 799–824.
[8]
Marko Komssi, Danielle Pichlis, Mikko Raatikainen, Klas Kindström, and Janne Järvinen. 2015. What are Hackathons for?IEEE Software 32, 5 (2015), 60–67.
[9]
Maria Angelica Medina Angarita and Alexander Nolte. 2020. What do we know about hackathon outcomes and how to support them? - A systematic literature review. In Collaboration Technologies and Social Computing. Springer.
[10]
Alexander Nolte. 2019. Touched by the Hackathon: a study on the connection between Hackathon participants and start-up founders. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGSOFT International Workshop on Software-Intensive Business: Start-ups, Platforms, and Ecosystems. 31–36.
[11]
Alexander Nolte, Linda Bailey Hayden, and James D Herbsleb. 2020. How to Support Newcomers in Scientific Hackathons-An Action Research Study on Expert Mentoring. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 4, CSCW1(2020), 1–23.
[12]
Alexander Nolte, Ei Pa Pa Pe-Than, Abasi-amefon Obot Affia, Chalalai Chaihirunkarn, Anna Filippova, Arun Kalyanasundaram, Maria Angelica Medina Angarita, Erik Trainer, and James D Herbsleb. 2020. How to organize a hackathon–A planning kit. arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.08025(2020).
[13]
Ei Pa Pa Pe-Than, Alexander Nolte, Anna Filippova, Christian Bird, Steve Scallen, and James D Herbsleb. 2019. Designing Corporate Hackathons With a Purpose: The Future of Software Development. IEEE Software 36, 1 (2019), 15–22.
[14]
Ei Pa Pa Pe-Than, Alexander Nolte, Anna Filippova, Chris Bird, Steve Scallen, and James D. Herbsleb. 2020. Corporate Hackathons, How and Why? A Multiple Case Study of Motivation, Projects Proposal and Selection, Goal Setting, Coordination, and Outcomes. Human-Computer Interaction(2020).
[15]
Jari Porras, Antti Knutas, Jouni Ikonen, Ari Happonen, Jayden Khakurel, and Antti Herala. 2019. Code camps and hackathons in education-literature review and lessons learned. In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
[16]
Porya Mohajer Soltani, Kalevi Pessi, Karin Ahlin, and Ida Wernered. 2014. Hackathon: A method for digital innovative success: A comparative descriptive study. In Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on IS Management and Evaluation. 367–373.
[17]
Nick Taylor and Loraine Clarke. 2018. Everybody’s Hacking: Participation and the Mainstreaming of Hackathons. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 172.
[18]
Jeremy Warner and Philip J Guo. 2017. Hack. edu: Examining how college hackathons are perceived by student attendees and non-attendees. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research. 254–262.

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Evaluating student satisfaction with online hackathon for IT projectsEurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education10.29333/ejmste/1360819:10(em2338)Online publication date: 2023
  • (2023)On Hackathons: A Multidisciplinary Literature ReviewProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581234(1-21)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Multidisciplinary Hackathons: Towards Developing Practical Software Engineering Skills2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343214(01-09)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
ICGJ '21: Proceedings of the 6th Annual International Conference on Game Jams, Hackathons, and Game Creation Events
August 2021
82 pages
ISBN:9781450384179
DOI:10.1145/3472688
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 02 August 2021

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. community engagement
  2. learning
  3. online hackathon
  4. time-bounded collaborative event

Qualifiers

  • Short-paper
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

Funding Sources

  • NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC)

Conference

ICGJ 2021

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 23 of 43 submissions, 53%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)24
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 12 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Evaluating student satisfaction with online hackathon for IT projectsEurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education10.29333/ejmste/1360819:10(em2338)Online publication date: 2023
  • (2023)On Hackathons: A Multidisciplinary Literature ReviewProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581234(1-21)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Multidisciplinary Hackathons: Towards Developing Practical Software Engineering Skills2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343214(01-09)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
  • (2022)How do participants collaborate during an online hackathon? An empirical, quantitative study of communication tracesFrontiers in Computer Science10.3389/fcomp.2022.9831644Online publication date: 15-Sep-2022
  • (2022)Socio-technical Constraints and Affordances of Virtual Collaboration - A Study of Four Online HackathonsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35552216:CSCW2(1-32)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
  • (2022)Keeping Fun Alive: an Experience Report on Running Online Coding Camps2022 IEEE/ACM 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET)10.1109/ICSE-SEET55299.2022.9794249(165-175)Online publication date: May-2022

View Options

Get Access

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

HTML Format

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media