skip to main content
research-article

How to Support Newcomers in Scientific Hackathons - An Action Research Study on Expert Mentoring

Published:29 May 2020Publication History
Skip Abstract Section

Abstract

Time-bounded events such as hackathons have become a global phenomenon. Scientific communities in particular show growing interest in organizing them to attract newcomers and develop technical artifacts to expand their code base. Current hackathon approaches presume that participants have sufficient expertise to work on projects on their own. They only provide occasional support by domain experts serving as mentors which might not be sufficient for newcomers. Drawing from work on workplace and educational mentoring, we developed and evaluated an approach where each hackathon team is supported by a community member who serves in a mentor role that goes beyond providing occasional support. Evaluating this approach, we found that teams who took ownership of their projects, set achievable goals early while building social ties with their mentor and receiving learning-oriented support reported positive perceptions related to their project and an increased interest in the scientific community that organized the hackathon. Our work thus contributes to our understanding of mentoring in hackathons, an area which has not been extensively studied. It also proposes a feasible approach for scientific communities to attract and integrate newcomers which is crucial for their long-term survival.

References

  1. Tammy D Allen. 2003. Mentoring others: A dispositional and motivational approach. Journal of Vocational Behavior 62, 1 (2003), 134--154.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  2. Tammy D Allen, Lillian T Eby, and Elizabeth Lentz. 2006. Mentorship behaviors and mentorship quality associated with formal mentoring programs: closing the gap between research and practice. Journal of Applied Psychology 91, 3 (2006), 567.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  3. Tammy D Allen, Lillian T Eby, Mark L Poteet, Elizabeth Lentz, and Lizzette Lima. 2004. Career benefits associated with mentoring for protégés: A meta-analysis. Journal of applied psychology 89, 1 (2004), 127.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  4. Pantelis Angelidis, Leslie Berman, Maria de la Luz Casas-Perez, Leo Anthony Celi, George E Dafoulas, Alon Dagan, Braiam Escobar, Diego M Lopez, Julieta Noguez, Juan Sebastian Osorio-Valencia, et al. 2016. The hackathon model to spur innovation around global mHealth. Journal of medical engineering & technology 40, 7--8 (2016), 392--399.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. Craig Anslow, John Brosz, Frank Maurer, and Mike Boyes. 2016. Datathons: an experience report of data hackathons for data science education. In Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education. ACM, 615--620.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  6. Bastiaan Baccarne, Peter Mechant, Dimitri Schuurma, Lieven De Marez, and Pieter Colpaert. 2014. Urban socio-technical innovations with and by citizens. Interdisciplinary Studies Journal 3, 4 (2014), 143.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. Eric Berger. 2017. Karachi Hackathon Takes on Emergency Medicine Challenges: Solutions Pitched for Resource-Poor Environments. Annals of Emergency Medicine 69, 3 (2017), A17--A20.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. Nataly Birbeck, Shaun Lawson, Kellie Morrissey, Tim Rapley, and Patrick Olivier. 2017. Self Harmony: rethinking hackathons to design and critique digital technologies for those affected by self-harm. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 146--157.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  9. Phyllis C Blumenfeld, Elliot Soloway, Ronald W Marx, Joseph S Krajcik, Mark Guzdial, and Annemarie Palincsar. 1991. Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. Educational psychologist 26, 3--4 (1991), 369--398.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. Glenn A Bowen. 2006. Grounded theory and sensitizing concepts. International journal of qualitative methods 5, 3 (2006), 12--23.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  11. Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative research in psychology 3, 2 (2006), 77--101.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  12. Gerard Briscoe. 2014. Digital innovation: The hackathon phenomenon. (2014).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  13. Jake Rowan Byrne, Katriona O'Sullivan, and Kevin Sullivan. 2017. An IoT and Wearable Technology Hackathon for Promoting Careers in Computer Science. IEEE Transactions on Education 60, 1 (2017), 50--58.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  14. Julie Campbell, Cecilia Aragon, Katie Davis, Sarah Evans, Abigail Evans, and David Randall. 2016. Thousands of positive reviews: Distributed mentoring in online fan communities. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. ACM, 691--704.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  15. Joohee Choi and Yla Tausczik. 2017. Characteristics of collaboration in the emerging practice of open data analysis. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. ACM, 835--846.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  16. Irene-Angelica Chounta, Sven Manske, and H Ulrich Hoppe. 2017. "From Making to Learning": introducing Dev Camps as an educational paradigm for Re-inventing Problem-based Learning. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education 14, 1 (2017), 21.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  17. David Cobham, Bruce Hargrave, Kevin Jacques, Carl Gowan, Jack Laurel, Scott Ringham, et al. 2017. From hackathon to student enterprise: an evaluation of creating successful and sustainable student entrepreneurial activity initiated by a university hackathon. In 9th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies. EDULEARN.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  18. R Cameron Craddock, Daniel S Margulies, Pierre Bellec, B Nolan Nichols, Sarael Alcauter, Fernando A Barrios, Yves Burnod, Christopher J Cannistraci, Julien Cohen-Adad, Benjamin De Leener, et al. 2016. Brainhack: a collaborative workshop for the open neuroscience community. GigaScience 5, 1 (2016), 16.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  19. Kevin Crowston, Qing Li, Kangning Wei, U Yeliz Eseryel, and James Howison. 2007. Self-organization of teams for free/libre open source software development. Information and software technology 49, 6 (2007), 564--575.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  20. Marthe Dehli. 2016. Hackathons as a ground for creating start-ups: Evidence from THE Port 2014. Ph.D. Dissertation. CERN.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  21. Martyn Denscombe. 2014. The good research guide: for small-scale social research projects. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  22. Naomi Ellemers, Paulien Kortekaas, and Jaap W Ouwerkerk. 1999. Self-categorisation, commitment to the group and group self-esteem as related but distinct aspects of social identity. European journal of social psychology 29, 2--3 (1999), 371--389.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  23. Ellen A Fagenson. 1989. The mentor advantage: Perceived career/job experiences of protégés versus non-protégés. Journal of organizational behavior 10, 4 (1989), 309--320.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  24. Fabian Fagerholm, Alejandro S Guinea, Jürgen Münch, and Jay Borenstein. 2014. The role of mentoring and project characteristics for onboarding in open source software projects. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE international symposium on empirical software engineering and measurement. ACM, 55.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  25. Anna Filippova, Erik Trainer, and James D Herbsleb. 2017. From diversity by numbers to diversity as process: supporting inclusiveness in software development teams with brainstorming. In Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Software Engineering. IEEE Press, 152--163.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  26. Denae Ford, Kristina Lustig, Jeremy Banks, and Chris Parnin. 2018. We Don't Do That Here: How Collaborative Editing with Mentors Improves Engagement in Social Q&A Communities. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 608.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  27. Allan Fowler. 2016. Informal stem learning in game jams, hackathons and game creation events. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Game Jams, Hackathons, and Game Creation Events. ACM, 38--41.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  28. Sarah Fox, Rachel Rose Ulgado, and Daniela Rosner. 2015. Hacking culture, not devices: Access and recognition in feminist hackerspaces. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing. ACM, 56--68.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  29. Kiev Gama, Breno Alencar, Filipe Calegario, André Neves, and Pedro Alessio. 2018. A Hackathon Methodology for Undergraduate Course Projects. In 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE). IEEE, 1--9.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  30. Sarah Hartmann, Agnes Mainka, and Wolfgang G Stock. 2018. Innovation Contests: How to Engage Citizens in Solving Urban Problems? In Enhancing Knowledge Discovery and Innovation in the Digital Era. IGI Global, 254--273.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  31. Ann M Heirdsfield, Sue Walker, Kerryann Walsh, and Lynn Wilss. 2008. Peer mentoring for first-year teacher education students: The mentors' experience. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning 16, 2 (2008), 109--124.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  32. Scott Henderson. 2015. Getting the most out of hackathons for social good. Volunteer Engagement 2.0: Ideas and insights changing the world (2015), 182--194.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  33. Chinh Hoang, John Liu, Zubaid Bokhari, and Allen Chan. 2016. IBM 2016 community hackathon. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering. 331--332.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  34. Alexis Hope, Catherine D'Ignazio, Josephine Hoy, Rebecca Michelson, Jennifer Roberts, Kate Krontiris, and Ethan Zuckerman. 2019. Hackathons as Participatory Design: Iterating Feminist Utopias. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 61.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  35. Lilly Irani. 2015. Hackathons and the making of entrepreneurial citizenship. Science, Technology, & Human Values 40, 5 (2015), 799--824.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  36. W Brad Johnson. 2002. The intentional mentor: Strategies and guidelines for the practice of mentoring. Professional psychology: Research and practice 33, 1 (2002), 88.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  37. Jenni Jones. 2013. Factors influencing mentees' and mentors' learning throughout formal mentoring relationships. Human Resource Development International 16, 4 (2013), 390--408.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  38. Marion Jones. 2001. Mentors' perceptions of their roles in school-based teacher training in England and Germany. Journal of Education for Teaching 27, 1 (2001), 75--94.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  39. Hanna Kienzler and Carolyn Fontanesi. 2017. Learning through inquiry: A global health hackathon. Teaching in Higher Education 22, 2 (2017), 129--142.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  40. Marko Komssi, Danielle Pichlis, Mikko Raatikainen, Klas Kindström, and Janne Järvinen. 2015. What are Hackathons for? IEEE Software 32, 5 (2015), 60--67.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  41. Brittany Ann Kos. 2016. The Unique Hackathon Experience. (2016).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  42. Kathy E Kram. 1983. Phases of the mentor relationship. Academy of Management journal 26, 4 (1983), 608--625.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  43. Kathy E Kram. 1985. Mentoring at work: Developmental relationships in organizational life. University Press of America.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  44. Hilmar Lapp, Sendu Bala, James P Balhoff, Amy Bouck, Naohisa Goto, Mark Holder, Richard Holland, Alisha Holloway, Toshiaki Katayama, Paul O Lewis, et al. 2007. The 2006 NESCent phyloinformatics hackathon: a field report.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  45. Miguel Lara and Kate Lockwood. 2016. Hackathons as community-based learning: a case study. TechTrends 60, 5 (2016), 486--495.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  46. Kurt Lewin. 1946. Action research and minority problems. Journal of social issues 2, 4 (1946), 34--46.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  47. Thomas James Lodato and Carl DiSalvo. 2016. Issue-oriented hackathons as material participation. New Media & Society 18, 4 (2016), 539--557.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  48. Carol A McKeen and Ronald J Burke. 1989. Mentor relationships in organisations: Issues, strategies and prospects for women. Journal of Management Development 8, 6 (1989), 33--42.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  49. Steffen Möller, Enis Afgan, Michael Banck, Raoul JP Bonnal, Timothy Booth, John Chilton, Peter JA Cock, Markus Gumbel, Nomi Harris, Richard Holland, et al. 2014. Community-driven development for computational biology at Sprints, Hackathons and Codefests. BMC bioinformatics 15, 14 (2014), S7.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  50. Evgeny Morozov. 2013. To save everything, click here: The folly of technological solutionism. Public Affairs.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  51. Jabu Mtsweni and Hanifa Abdullah. 2015. Stimulating and maintaining students' interest in Computer Science using the hackathon model. The Independent Journal of Teaching and Learning 10, 1 (2015), 85--97.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  52. Arnab Nandi and Meris Mandernach. 2016. Hackathons as an informal learning platform. In Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education. ACM, 346--351.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  53. Alexander Nolte. 2019. Touched by the Hackathon: a study on the connection between Hackathon participants and start-up founders. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGSOFT International Workshop on Software-Intensive Business: Start-ups, Platforms, and Ecosystems. 31--36.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  54. Alexander Nolte, Ei Pa Pa Pe-Than, Anna Filippova, Christian Bird, and Herbsleb James D. Scallen, Steve. 2018. You Hacked and Now What? - Exploring Outcomes of a Corporate Hackathon. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2, CSCW (2018), 129:1--129:23.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  55. Finlay Page, Sylvester Sweeney, Fraser Bruce, Seaton Baxter, et al. 2016. The use of the "hackathon" in design education: an opportunitstic exploration.. In DS 83: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE16), Design Education: Collaboration and Cross-Disciplinarity, Aalborg, Denmark, 8th-9th September 2016. 246--251.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  56. Ei Pa Pa Pe-Than and James D Herbsleb. 2019. Understanding Hackathons for Science: Collaboration, Affordances, and Outcomes. In International Conference on Information. Springer, 27--37.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  57. Ei Pa Pa Pe-Than, Alexander Nolte, Anna Filippova, Christian Bird, Steve Scallen, and James D Herbsleb. 2019. Designing Corporate Hackathons With a Purpose: The Future of Software Development. IEEE Software 36, 1 (2019), 15--22.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  58. J Porras, K Heikkinen, and J Ikonen. 2007. Code camp: a setting for collaborative learning of programming. Advanced Technology for Learning 4, 1 (2007), 43--52.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  59. Jari Porras, Antti Knutas, Jouni Ikonen, Ari Happonen, Jayden Khakurel, and Antti Herala. 2019. Code camps and hackathons in education-literature review and lessons learned. In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  60. Emily Porter, Chris Bopp, Elizabeth Gerber, and Amy Voida. 2017. Reappropriating Hackathons: The Production Work of the CHI4Good Day of Service. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 810--814.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  61. Belle Rose Ragins, John L Cotton, and Janice S Miller. 2000. Marginal mentoring: The effects of type of mentor, quality of relationship, and program design on work and career attitudes. Academy of management journal 43, 6 (2000), 1177--1194.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  62. Belle Rose Ragins and Dean B McFarlin. 1990. Perceptions of mentor roles in cross-gender mentoring relationships. Journal of Vocational Behavior 37, 3 (1990), 321--339.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  63. John W Ramatowski, Christopher Xiang Lee, Aikaterini Mantzavino, João Ribas, Winter Guerra, Nicholas D Preston, Eva Schernhammer, Lawrence C Madoff, and Britta Lassmann. 2017. Planning an innovation marathon at an infectious disease conference with results from the International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance 2016 Hackathon. International Journal of Infectious Diseases 65 (2017), 93--97.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  64. Bruce A Reinig. 2003. Toward an Understanding of Satisfaction with the Process and Outcomes of Teamwork. Journal of Management Information Systems 19, 4 (2003), 65--83.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  65. Bard Rosell, Shiven Kumar, and John Shepherd. 2014. Unleashing innovation through internal hackathons. In Innovations in Technology Conference (InnoTek), 2014 IEEE. IEEE, 1--8.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  66. Melody L Russell and Jared A Russell. 2011. Mentoring Relationships: Cooperating Teachers' Perspectives on Mentoring Student Interns. Professional Educator 35, 1 (2011), n1.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  67. John E Sawyer. 1992. Goal and process clarity: Specification of multiple constructs of role ambiguity and a structural equation model of their antecedents and consequences. Journal of Applied Psychology 77, 2 (1992), 130.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  68. Janet Siegmund, Christian Kästner, Jörg Liebig, Sven Apel, and Stefan Hanenberg. 2014. Measuring and modeling programming experience. Empirical Software Engineering 19, 5 (2014), 1299--1334.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  69. Susan Elliott Sim and Richard C Holt. 1998. The ramp-up problem in software projects: A case study of how software immigrants naturalize. In icse. IEEE, 361.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  70. Porya Mohajer Soltani, Kalevi Pessi, Karin Ahlin, and Ida Wernered. 2014. Hackathon: A method for digital innovative success: A comparative descriptive study. In Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on IS Management and Evaluation. 367--373.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  71. Walter Swap, Dorothy Leonard, Mimi Shields, and Lisa Abrams. 2001. Using mentoring and storytelling to transfer knowledge in the workplace. Journal of management information systems 18, 1 (2001), 95--114.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  72. Nick Taylor and Loraine Clarke. 2018. Everybody's Hacking: Participation and the Mainstreaming of Hackathons. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 172.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  73. John W Thomas. 2000. A review of research on project-based learning. (2000).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  74. Andrea K Thomer, Michael B Twidale, Jinlong Guo, and Matthew J Yoder. 2016. Co-designing scientific software: Hackathons for participatory interface design. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 3219--3226.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  75. Erik H Trainer, Chalalai Chaihirunkarn, Arun Kalyanasundaram, and James D Herbsleb. 2014. Community code engagements: summer of code & hackathons for community building in scientific software. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Supporting Group Work. ACM, 111--121.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  76. Erik H Trainer, Arun Kalyanasundaram, Chalalai Chaihirunkarn, and James D Herbsleb. 2016. How to hackathon: Sociotechnical tradeoffs in brief, intensive collocation. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. ACM, 1118--1130.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  77. Erik H Trainer, Arun Kalyanasundaram, and James D Herbsleb. 2017. e-mentoring for software engineering: a sociotechnical perspective. In Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training Track (ICSE-SEET), 2017 IEEE/ACM 39th International Conference on. IEEE, 107--116.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  78. Walter F Uys. 2019. Hackathons as a Formal Teaching Approach in Information Systems Capstone Courses. In Annual Conference of the Southern African Computer Lecturers' Association. Springer, 79--95.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  79. Lev Vygotsky. 1978. Interaction between learning and development. Readings on the development of children 23, 3 (1978), 34--41.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  80. Jeremy Warner and Philip J Guo. 2017. Hack. edu: Examining how college hackathons are perceived by student attendees and non-attendees. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research. 254--262.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  81. Nancy Wilkins-Diehr. 2007. Special issue: science gateways-common community interfaces to grid resources. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience 19, 6 (2007), 743--749.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  82. Jane Wyngaard, Heather Lynch, Jaroslaw Nabrzyski, Allen Pope, and Shantenu Jha. 2017. Hacking at the divide between polar science and HPC: using hackathons as training tools. In 2017 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops (IPDPSW). IEEE, 352--359.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  83. Robert K Yin. 2017. Case study research and applications: Design and methods. Sage publications.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  84. Jorge Luis Zapico Lamela, Daniel Pargman, Hannes Ebner, and Elina Eriksson. 2013. Hacking sustainability: Broadening participation through green hackathons. In Fourth International Symposium on End-User Development. June 10--13, 2013, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Index Terms

  1. How to Support Newcomers in Scientific Hackathons - An Action Research Study on Expert Mentoring

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Login options

    Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

    Sign in

    Full Access

    PDF Format

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader
    About Cookies On This Site

    We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.

    Learn more

    Got it!