BORROWING FROM HACKATHONS: OVERNIGHT DESIGNATHONS AS A TEMPLATE FOR CREATIVE IDEA HUBS IN THE SPACE OF HANDS-ON LEARNING, DIGITAL LEARNING, AND SYSTEMS RE-THINKING

Overnight hackathons have risen in popularity as fast-paced environments for creative minds to convene and ideate. The Education Designathon brought together education thinkers from the MIT, Harvard, Brown, and Olin community and demonstrated project ideation, development, and implementation in under 33 hours.17 projects were born out of the three design categories: Hands-On Learning, Digital Learning, and Systems Re-Thinking. There were four key design parameters of the event— i) Three topic categories were framed: Hands-On Learning, Digital Learning, and Systems Re-Thinking, ii) Education Experts were brought in to pitch Challenge Presentations, lead workshops, and serve as ad hoc mentors, iii) A laboratory equipped with prototyping materials and a spending budget for each student enabled physical project developments, and iv) Award categories were not matched to the three topic categories but to sponsoring EdExperts.Using participant-generated feedback and observations from site visits to similar events within the developer community, this paper reviews failures and successes of the Education Designathon and concludes with recommendations for future instances of hackathons seeking similar goals. The results of the Education Designathon suggest education is an appropriate theme for the structure of hackathons. What’s more, it previews the plethora of solutions born by simply introducing education as a transparent and “hackable” challenge to a creative youth trained with problem-solving skills.