What a sociologist sees when observing a hackathon
by Andrea Isabel Frei
I recently had the opportunity to attend the bitmark Association hackathon from March 24–26th, 2023. I was not going to do any coding, but to observe the event through a sociological lens, interested in understanding the processes, interactions and negotiations taking place during the challenge.
The hackathon was a non-stop 24-hour event, with over a dozen teams from all over the world working to build a language learning app based on the bitmark standard. The solutions were then presented, and in an award ceremony the jury chose their favourites.
The event was held in a hybrid mode, with most participants joining online while a few teams were on site. Although a hackathon doesn’t represent a usual software development process, it showed how the participants managed given limitations and priorities, which (maybe except sleep deprivation) are likely part of any development and shape the end product.
As someone who had never attended an in-person hackathon before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Maybe the stereotype bunch of techies in hoodies, silently hammering away at their keyboards? However, any preconceived notions I had in mind were quickly remediated.
I was impressed by the diverse group of people who participated, including individuals of all ages and backgrounds — some were friends, some family, others colleagues, or complete strangers to one another.
A mix of different participants from the wide field of education gathered in the co-working space, each bringing their own abilities to the table. It became clear that coding was not the only skill needed in the process. Learning is a complex social notion, after all, and didactic and pedagogical concepts need to be considered as much as technical functionalities.
Although the event was supposed to be a competition, the atmosphere was more one of cooperation at all times.
It was fascinating to observe the group dynamics, how quickly responsibilities and tasks were divided, and everyone got down to business. Teams had to make quick decisions and pivot when necessary, pursuing one approach, just to let go of it hours later and start anew, all while keeping the end goal in mind.
One impressive aspect of the hackathon was the effortless integration of ChatGPT into the teams’ solutions. It was amazing to see how the LLM could spit out language learning tasks in seconds. This use of a text generator, the purpose of which is to produce probable sequences of words, in educational technologies gives lots of food for thought.
Overall, I learned a great deal from the hackathon, and was impressed by the energy and focus of all participants, and I’m looking forward to learning what will emerge from the approaches developed during these intense 24 hours!
Andrea Isabel Frei is a sociologist and PhD researcher at the University of Teacher Education in Zurich — PHZH, working on the project «Algorithmic Sorting in Education»
Learn more about the bitmark Hackathon here: https://bitmark-association.org/hackathon
