Designing an effective hackathon via university-industry collaboration for data science education

Abstract

Hackathons have been used not only by enterprises for technological innovation and digital transformation, but also in academia for education innovation and programme promotion. This paper presents a hybrid approach for transforming an enterprise's workplace problem into a technology vendor-sponsored hackathon education. A real-life case study of a hackathon for college participants who are prospective students of a university data science programme is demonstrated. The university-industry collaborative approach of the hackathon provides several benefits for its stakeholders, namely promoting the reputation and recognition of the university's data science programme; offering creative and innovative solutions to the enterprise's workplace problems; encouraging the adoption of the technology vendor's platform, and finally, enhancing the teaching and learning experience for the college students and lecturers. This paper provides a structured framework and recommends practical principles and guidelines for designing effective hackathons that can bring about mind-set change and real-world business transformation.