Hack it with EDUCHIC! Educational hackathons and interdisciplinary challenges—Definitions, principles, and pedagogical guidelines

Abstract

Whereas hackathons are widespread within and outside academia and have been argued to be a valid pedagogical method for teaching interdisciplinarity, no detailed frameworks or methods are available for conceptualizing and organizing educational hackathons, i.e., hackathons dedicated to best achieving pedagogic objectives. This paper is dedicated to introducing EDUCational Hackathons for learning how to solve Interdisciplinary Challenges (EDUCHIC) through: (1) defining the fundamental principles for framing an activity as an EDUCHIC, integrating principles from pedagogical methods, hackathon organization, and interdisciplinarity processes; (2) describing general properties that EDUCHIC possess as a consequence of the interaction of the fundamental principles; (3) developing operational guidelines for streamlining the practical organization of EDUCHIC, including an exhaustive end-to-end process covering all the steps for organizing EDUCHIC and practical frames for carrying the key decisions to be made in this process; and (4) a demonstration of these guidelines through illustrating their application for organizing a concrete EDUCHIC.