Apr 12, 2016
What Educational Institutions Can Learn From Hackathons
The Case for Skills-Based Learning
*Recap: In March 2016, I along with 12 other colleagues (across multiple disciplines) decided to launch Queen’s University’s inaugural Hackathon. We faced many challenges along the road — a mere byproduct of our attempt to bring a new trend into a smaller, lesser-known town with minimal resources and a short time window. With continued persistence and resourcefulness, we were able to bring this across the finish line and launch a successful first year. Today, QHack’s has become one of the largest Hackathons in North America, with over 900 attendees over a 3-day weekend and sponsors that include Microsoft, Google, and SunLife. After reflecting on what the Hackathon meant for my colleagues and I, and education more broadly, I decided to capture a few of my thoughts in real-time.
Just over a month ago, two bright yellow school buses arrived on campus packed with 200 creative and energic students, all who seemed particularly fascinated by the state of our campus life; an electric atmosphere concealed in a small town. These students were selected for QHacks, Queen’s University’s inaugural hackathon.
As we had anxiously anticipated the opening ceremony for months, we were in near disbelief that this was actually happening. Rather than attending their primary responsibilities (partying and school-related work) they hopped on a bus and drove several hours to spend the weekend at Queen’s building fascinating technology products. As students were shuffled into the auditorium for the opening ceremony, we became more and more nervous.
This weekend would not only become a pivotal moment for the technology community here at Queen’s, but for the university as a whole.
But — Lets back up for a moment.
For those who don’t know, your first question is likely, “What is a Hackathon?”.
It’s simple. An event where crafty software engineers, designers, and general operators, collaborate in teams to design and build something unique and futuristic over a 52-hour time span — from scratch. You guessed it, that means no sleep. These products are usually original software or hardware products that act as useful solutions to tough problems in the community or elsewhere. Prizes are distributed to top teams in the form of company swag (the traditional startup currency), tablets or Amazon gift cards.
For some context, the culture around the tech scene today is intense. More than ever before, ‘Tech Entrepreneurship’ is so widely recognized and endorsed. Millions of people from all over the world, despite their degree or age, are channeling their thoughts in a direction that involves pushing their community forward through technology. As you can imagine, with this kind of buildup, hackathons have become overwhelmingly popular.
To give some added perspective, Michigan Hacks (MHacks) one of the largest hackathons in the world, had a total of 1,200 hackers. Buses arrived from over 40 schools all across North America, nearly 200 of which flew in from one end of the country. Waterloo and Ryerson University also stamped their names as the ‘Tech Hub’ of Canada with internationally recognized facilities such as Velocity, Digital Media Zone, or hackathons such as ‘Hack the North’ that hosted roughly 1000 hackers.
Queen’s too, has a tremendous amount of talent. The issue we realized was that our designed curriculum lacked the ability to build conviction among students that this skill or domain is important, meaningful and exciting. Conviction was increasingly scarce on campus. There needed to be a spark. Despite these cultural barriers, our team had the same underlying belief in its importance; that this event would serve as a new and refreshing take on what our educational system could strive to mirror.
What educational institutions can learn from hackathons:
Here’s what the current education system looks like:
You explore something interesting
- You get stuck with it
- You hammer down concepts
- You cram and memorize for exams
- You join the workforce and never look back
How hackathons operate:
- You state your hypothesis
- You iterate your hypothesis
- You get feedback and improve
- Repeat
There are stark differences here. The former is slow and proves that once you’ve committed to a distinct learning path, it’s nearly impossible to escape without being hugely penalized. The latter is a feedback loop centered around working with, and applying the material to real-life situations while evaluating and thinking critically about the problem at hand.
One of the biggest mistakes the education system constantly makes today is the misconception it has between knowledge-based learning and Skill-based learning. Many teachers seem to believe that in order for students to succeed post-grad, teaching skills that are solely relevant the jobs that physically exist out there today, creates the best overall outcome.
I’d challenge that. The question we should be asking is: How do we best prepare students for jobs of the future? Those jobs are hard to imagine with the technological change we’re experiencing, so the broader question becomes — how can we help students invent themselves in ways not even ourselves can imagine? Coupled with that thought, we have to think about how we can create an exceptional educational and student experience in a 21st-century context without having the kinds of pre-conceived notions or burdens of an existing institution.
We need to start building educational curricula that have a broader influence in the higher education sector and actually leads the rest of higher education to a new concept of curriculum by pushing for continuous curiosity, high-level creativity, and new experiences. Importance needs to be placed on teaching habits of mind and foundational concepts that enable students to learn how to learn and continue to apply that thought-process throughout their lives. At a high level, this will best set them up for opportunities that may not have existed at first.
“Content is a vehicle for teaching them tools that they can use for the rest of their lives to keep learning and growing”
— Stephen Kosslyn, Founding Dean at Minerva Schools
That’s where the notion of Hackathons are a good platform to advocate for this change and are phenomenal examples of what education system should strive to encompass. They focus on a much more immersive way of learning. Not only do they promote the culture of technology, but they give students an opportunity to tackle these problems hands-on and develop new, practical and tangible knowledge.
The best part: If you’re not as technically inclined as the engineers, you don’t have to worry. The community, culture, and team-support of these events are incredible. There is a tremendous support system around you at all times. It’s almost as though they won’t let you leave without picking up a new skill or developing a solid relationship. I remember talking to a friend of mine who nervously attended a hackathon as a business student with zero technical experience. Within 24 hours, he walked out with a decent amount of knowledge in HTML and CSS. More importantly, however, the confidence and passion instilled in him to learn more in such a short time period was astounding. All simply because the culture surrounding these events want to help you learn.
These are the learning experiences and strategies we should be trying to enforce, not mugging up material the night before a test just to regurgitate it the next day.
Hackathons should be used as guidelines to form future curricula when thinking about how to enforce critical thinking, creativity, and leadership — skills that will be in demand in the coming years. When I try to recreate the list from above, I arrive up at a more nuanced take of what the current education system could try and incorporate based on experiences in participating.
- Critical thinking (evaluating claims & weighing decisions)
- Creative thinking (solving problems & facilitating discovery)
- Effective interaction (negotiating & working in teams)
- Effective communication (clear thoughts & presenting)
- Repeat
Hackathons are a big step in the right direction to improving intra-university collaboration and opening the gates for experiential learning. I believe that by adopting this ideal at our school, we can show that this approach can not only better our educational system here at Queen’s, but spread the message to the rest of the world.
— — — — —
On behalf of QHacks, I want to give a HUGE thank you to all the applicants and delegates who came out. Without your faith in the Queen’s community, none of this would have been remotely possible.
All the photos and videos from the event have been shared on our website and all our social media pages.
