Enabling Digital Transformation Strategies with Hackathons in Large-Scale Critical Infrastructures

In order to be successful and effective, digital transformation requires a significant effort related to reinvention in an organization. In addition, there are many cultural changes and collaborative requirements that must be applied. The use of hackathons has gained in popularity as a method of collaboration to quickly solve a business problem. Companies have used hackathons to build prototypes, elicit design ideas, make decisions, and explore innovative ways to do things. This study utilized a qualitative dataset that was collected during multiple hackathons conducted in a large global commercial/consumer water pump company. The preliminary findings from this research project indicate that elements of digital transformation occurred both during and after the hackathon. Future research leads to the proposal of an updated framework for strategizing-as-practice that can be utilized to qualify strategizing and prototyping experiences from hackathons over complex large-scale critical infrastructures

From Times Square to Eyre Square: Hackathons as Authentic Learning for Information Systems Students

In order to ensure students meet the learning outcomes for a module in user experience design, an authentic learning approach was used to design a User Experience (UX) Hackathon, called Empathy Jam. UX hackathons are short events where participants work in groups on a challenge, using user-centred design techniques. The learning from the hackathon comes through the process of taking part, as well as collaborative learning from their team members. An important feature of Empathy Jam is collaboration with industry partners who act as mentors to guide the participants through the process. Assessment of learning was done through the use of video and reflective journals. The groups created a video record of their day, demonstrating their engagement and participation as a group, as well as the group learnings. Individual learnings were assessed through the reflective journals. Feedback on the event was obtained through the journals, vox pops on the day, a feedback survey and feedback from the mentors.Hogan, M. (2020). From Times Square to Eyre Square: Hackathons as Authentic Learning for Information Systems Students. En 6th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'20). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. (30-05-2020):301-308. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd20.2020.11046OCS30130830-05-202

Disruptive Momentum: The Value of Implementing Best Practices in Health Research Postdoctoral Mentorship

COVID-19 called attention to the challenges postdoctoral fellows in health research face when they have times of prolonged disruption or changes in work conditions; this disruption revealed key insights on how mentors, fellows, and their institutions can work together to ensure training continuity. To prepare strong scientists, postdoctoral fellowships need mentoring, training, and networking opportunities to enhance fellows’ professional and skill development. In this article we outline potential solutions to minimize the impact of disruptions while promoting adaptable postdoctoral fellowship experiences by addressing how mentors and fellows alike can intervene on three key aspects of fellowships in health research: mentorship, training, and networking

The UX Fest SLO Website Redesigned for Better Comprehension

UX Fest SLO is a student organization that strives to help Cal Poly students learn and foster their UX skills by providing accessible UX learning opportunities. UX Fest SLO is known to be a successful organization that allows students to learn and grow in their craft; however, the number of students that benefit from this organization is not as high as the club would like. One of the reasons why UX Fest SLO may not see this growth in numbers is due to a poorly designed website. Users are unable understand what the club is all about when they look at the website. For a UX-centric club, they fail to offer high quality user experiences. The purpose of this club is to redesign the UX Fest SLO website to create a simpler, digestible solution that allows users to better comprehend the club’s mission, activities, and events. This was a solo project prompted by my Senior Project class. I had 10 weeks to work on it, and everything is made with Figma and Adobe InDesign

From appfest to entrepreneurs: using a hackathon event to seed a university student-led enterprise

Hackathons were once industry-specific programming sprints to get overdue features and applications completed; today they are a worldwide phenomenon, with businesses, educators, and entrepreneurs taking an interest in the benefits they can provide. Hackathons can be a breeding ground for brainstorming, innovation, networking, and product development, and as such they can have multiple outcomes including the sparking of new businesses and entrepreneurial activity. This paper investigates the effectiveness of utilising a hackathon as the genesis for the creation of sustainable student entrepreneurial activity. In particular, it seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of using hackathon-type events to initiate a successful University student enterprise project. The paper outlines the findings from this project, and concludes with a series of recommendations from the authors, on how one should market and structure a hackathon, and whether this vehicle should be chosen as a means to initiate a student enterprise project. The key factors that led to the success of this project were: the degree of formal structure that was introduced into the timings of the principle activities, not normally a feature of this kind of event, including scheduled “diversions” to break up the weekend; keeping the goals achievable; the duration of the event, in this case 48 hours spread over three days; the involvement of representatives from local businesses in the judging process; and crucially the adoption of an over-riding ethos for the event that focussed not on providing completed problem solutions but on potential innovative solutions that may not have been fully-functional. Areas for improvement included: inviting more students from earlier study years of degree programmes, not always the target audience for University hackathon activity; inviting students from a wide range of disciplines to ensure a broad set of participant skills and to encourage the formation of multi-disciplinary groupings by enforcing a balance of skills across teams, which as a corollary means not always allowing friendship groups to remain together; employing a team sufficiently large enough to support the duration of a long event; and careful consideration of the extent of competitiveness adopted in the event ethos. The project was part of the institution’s “Student as Producer” initiative where students and staff work side-by-side on research projects. Undergraduate students were fully involved in all aspects of the project, including an independent team who contributed to the authoring of this paper

Code camps and hackathons in education - literature review and lessons learned

Motivation: Code camps and hackathons been used in education for almost two decades. These approaches are usually intensive and for most times quite practical events for solving some real-world problems with various educational objectives. The objectives and structures of these events differ depending on the role of the event in curricula. Problem statement: Both code camps and hackathons been implemented in various ways, with varying success levels. As expected the implementation of the event varies considerably depending on the objectives set for the event, but that then leads to the difficulty and problem setting to understand what organizing of these events actually mean. For educational context, curricula have also its role in defining the targeted skills and competencies the events has to consider too. Approach: We applied a systematic literature review (SLR) to look at the various definitions and modes of these events. Whether it is called “code camp”, or “hackathon”, or anything else with the same basic meaning, we want to find out what skills and competencies these events emphasize, how they are used in Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SE) education and what are the general structures of the actual arranged events. Contribution: It is aim of this SLR to i) identify various possible ways of implementing these intensive events, and ii) reflect the results to the lessons we have learned of almost two decades of various intensive code camps and hackathons we have been organizing building and participating into. Based on the results, we claim that there is tremendous potential of using these events in education and in the curriculum than how it has been applied so far