Hi, my name is Alexander Notte, and in this video,
I will present our work on supporting newcomers
in scientific hackathons together
with my colleagues, Linda Bailey Hayden and James Herbsleb.
Hackathons are time-bounded events
which typically last between two and five
days, during which people gather together
and form teams, each of which attempts
to complete a project that is of interest to them.
We particularly focus on collocated events.
Scientific communities have embraced the hackathon format
as a means to grow interest in their community
and create new or expand existing technical artifacts.
Hackathons organized by such communities
typically have a strong learning component,
since they require participants to quickly navigate
in the context of a new domain and learn new technologies.
Current hackathon approaches are not particularly
well suited for this context though,
since they presume that participants
possess sufficient expertise to work on projects on their own.
In order to support participants,
we developed an approach where a domain expert is embedded
into each team as a mentor.
Our aim was to understand how this mentor would help teams
to set and adapt goals, provide technical advice,
and how their mentoring approaches would
be related to the perception of teams and mentors.
The concept of mentoring is not new in the context
of hackathons.
The role of hackathon mentor typically
focuses on providing on-demand technical support or project
feedback to any team in need.
This approach, however, does not appear
to be feasible for the given context.
We thus instead turn towards traditional mentoring
approaches, where mentoring is perceived
more as a relationship between a mentor and a protege,
during which the mentor provides support, guidance,
and counseling.
For our study, we thus embedded a mentor
into each team to foster learning
in the context of a scientific hackathon.
To assess the feasibility of this approach
and to identify means for its improvement,
we conducted an action research study
during a two day overnight hackathon
of a scientific community.
During this hackathon, we studied three teams
that consisted of three to four students
from different backgrounds.
Each team was assigned a domain expert as a mentor.
For our study, we connected and analyzed
planning documents, conducted pre and post interviews,
observed all teams during the hackathon,
and conducted post interviews with students and mentors.
Our findings revealed various differences
related to the approaches the mentors took.
We will illustrate them based on two specific teams.
The mentor of team A proposed a potential project to the team,
but ask them to set their own goals
right at the beginning of the hackathon.
In comparison, the mentor of team B
first attempted to convince the students to complete
the project he proposed.
Only after he realized that the project would
be too difficult for the students to complete,
he asked them to come up with their own project idea.
With respect to technical advice,
we also found two different approaches.
The mentor of team A provided tutorials and code fragments
to his team, while the mentor of team A
supported them in finding tutorials and code
fragments for themselves.
We also found that the mentor of team A
focused more on supporting the team
to develop a suitable project idea and project plan,
while the mentor of team B focused more
on the technical aspects of the project he had proposed.
The mentor of team A thus took a more traditional mentoring role
by focusing on the students' learning progress,
while the mentor of team B took more the role of a stakeholder
or product owner by focusing more on the technical aspects
on the project itself.
These differences might have contributed
to both mentor and students in team A
to be satisfied with a project, while this was not
the case for the mentor and students of team B.
Our findings thus indicate that the approach
of assigning a mentor to a team is
feasible to support participants to join
the hackathon of a community they are not familiar with.
Based on our analysis of the different mentoring approaches
we observed, we can also provide suggestions
for mentors and communities on how to organize
learning oriented hackathon.
In particular, mentors should abstain
from becoming product owners and focus
on student learning instead.
They should also support students
to plan projects that fit their abilities,
rather than asking them to complete
projects they had developed prior to the hackathon.
Finally, they should help students
find their own solutions to technical problems,
rather than providing ready-made solutions to them.
Communities should proceed hackathons
as a means for students to rather
learn and grow interest than as a means for technical progress.
And they should try to find suitable mentors
and coach them in order to fulfill
their role during the hackathon more effectively.
Thank you for listening, and you will find more information
about our work on hackathons in the listed ResearchGate project
and on the website of the hackathon planning kit.