Future Proof: Hackathons as Occasions to Experience Entrepreneurial Thinking

Abstract

The pandemic has opened up room for a creative reinvention of traditional teaching and learning formats making entrepreneurial skills, as, e.g., described in the EntreComp framework, a more pronounced part of the curriculum. As part of the course “Positive Computing and Diversity in Human Computer Interaction,” which is offered to students of different study programs within the computer science department, a (coding-free) two-day online hackathon was organized as an occasion to experience and strengthen entrepreneurial skills. Two major goals were pursued with the work documented in this chapter: (a) providing students with an intense, challenging hands-on experience of different facets of their own entrepreneurial potential, and (b) describing example hackathon events regarding the content, technical and organizational structure as recommendation for practitioners. Consequently, besides outlining a pilot hackathon, the chapter describes essential elements of the course, in which the hackathon was embedded, and content as well as didactic orchestration of both, the course and the hackathon. Evaluation data from two hackathon rounds are presented and taken up in a discussion and reflection.