Activating Active Learning: A multidisciplinary hackathon for staff

At this event, teams were comprised of three groups of stakeholders: The academics who taught and supported teaching at Dublin City University (DCU); the mentors who were either local professional services staff or pedagogical experts from other institutions; and the students who were student ambassadors and a research assistant.

On the day, six self-organised teams came up with short, medium and long-term recommendations based around the following challenge statements:
-  Normalising Active Learning Strategies to increase engagement within diverse students groups across modules within programmes 
- How do we design CBL approaches to assessment at scale?
- How do we increase competence, confidence and creative thinking among DCU staff to implement AI in teaching, learning and assessment?
-  How can we authentically embed ESD in the culture of T&L @ DCU? 
- How to motivate students to autonomously engage with a transversal skills platform
- What methods can we use to stimulate and support commitment to engaged learning in Semester 1 of Year 1?

Throughout the process, the students were available to provide student perspectives and the mentors were on hand to guide and provide feedback at each stage.

A full summary of the event with photos is available on the Teaching Enhancement Unit Website. See https://www.dcu.ie/teu/hackathon
 

We can describe the impact from three key perspectives - impact on teaching professionals,  impact on learners, and scholarly reach:

1. Impact on Teaching Professionals -  we believe it met our objectives of providing not only an experience of a hackathon for those educators who might be interested in doing something similar themselves, but it also provided a useful vehicle for promoting active learning as a concept and in practical ways. At least one staff member was inspired to implement CBL for the first time the following semester and has since engaged extensively with our unit to develop award-winning CBL practice. (See https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=ECIU%20impact%20a…). ECIU are also developing a blog post about this award which is currently in progress.

2. Impact on Learners - In this case, the learners were primarily teaching staff. Throughout the evaluation data, we can see evidence that staff found the hackathon informative especially when it comes to the discussions and availability of the variety of activities and tools that could be used in the active learning environment:

Some active learning is already incorporated into my teaching practice. I will look for further places where active learning could be included. Following some insightful comments from the student ambassadors, I now intend to include more polling/anonymous quizzes during lectures. - Staff Participant

I'll use student response systems like Vevox (gamification), and interactive tools like digital whiteboards (Loop Board activity), more group-based projects and peer-to-peer teaching activities to promote collaboration and deeper understanding among students. - Staff Participant

There were also some additional benefits in terms of learnings from the topics discussed in the respective teams - most notably Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Staff noted that the hackathon has piqued their interest and opened avenues for further collaboration and motivation for ESD engagement:

I also gained a lot of information around sustainability and its role in teaching generally, particularly as a motivator for teachers and students.’ - Staff Participant

3. Scholarly Reach - Following a call for contributions, the TEU have been accepted to contribute a chapter about running this hackathon to a forthcoming open book on Active Learning (being developed by the UK Active Learning Network, see https://activelearningnetwork.com/new-aln-co-created-book/). The book will be called ‘Making active learning happen for all’. Our chapter, called ‘Modelling Active Learning through a Challenge-Based Hackathon’ will feature in this book.

Key Learning

We intend to continue to run staff-oriented hackathon events as TEU resources and funding permits. Some points we have reflected upon and would advise others to consider are:
The extensive planning/coordination time needed to organise a hackathon which took up considerable time for the two organisers in particular. A lead-in time of 3 months as described by Lyons et al (2021) resonates with our experience.

The funding required for catering (a ready stream of food, with sustainable options, throughout the day is vital) and additional funds may be required for honorariums and prizes.

The contribution of student ambassadors at this event was significant and something we would highly recommend to encourage an inclusive learning experience for all.  We also made efforts to ensure that the democratic principles of student partnership (Hassan et al, 2022) were enacted. In particular, we wanted to recognise the need to be cognisant of power dynamics to promote collaboration, reciprocity and shared responsibility between staff and students. Instead of having students sit within groups where they may potentially not have the opportunity or confidence to contribute, the students sat separately at first and were sought out by the hackathon participants when questions arose. This allowed the teams the opportunity to clearly phrase their questions and deliberately seek out the expertise on learning that students uniquely had to offer. Sometimes the students responded to the teams individually, sometimes in pairs. Based on what we witnessed on the day, this simple rearrangement of the collaboration setup led to mutually respectful and informed exchanges of knowledge and experience on all sides.

The timing of the event itself - in retrospect, we would use the full day but are also mindful of the difficulty in attracting participants and mentors to a full-day commitment. However, there is a trade-off that occurs in terms of limited reflection opportunities within a shorter timeframe that should be considered.

Inclusion and transparency can also be considered as core to the overall ethos of the event in which the schedule and plan was shared in advance as was information about the mentors on an openly-available web page. 
 

Future Work:

This project will inform future work by influencing how and when we shall run such events in future. For example, we will not attempt to run it during the teaching term and instead will continue to host such events in May, when more staff seem to be freer to attend. We may extend the day somewhat as it was extremely tight to run it from 9.30 to 3.30 pm and some extra time would permit at least some form of reflection to take place during the event itself. 
We received very useful feedback from the mentors about areas for improvement in future. Mentors who responded to the survey reported feeling generally well-prepared for their role and the support material in the mentor packs was cited as useful in setting the scene and clarifying expectations. However most acknowledged that there is a need for a clearer role definition for the mentors in terms of boundaries around providing guidance/feedback and pacing the teams. Additional guidance on approaching and leading CBL framework discussions would also be helpful in the next iteration.

Evaluation:

All participants were invited to share their feedback through a post-event survey. Ethical approval for this project was granted through the DCU Research Ethics Committee (see Reference DCUREC/2024/020).

‘Creative, Collaborative and Fun’: The case for CBL as a pedagogy
CBL engagement in staff was motivated by curiosity. Staff found elements of innovation and creativity like teamwork and collaboration particularly insightful on a personal and professional front.

‘Fast and Furious’: The Tensions of Timeframes and the Space to Reflect
The limited time and fast pace typical of a hackathon came with pros and cons; one being limited time for reflection but on the other hand it gave all participants a clear picture of engagement with the CBL cycle.

‘A tool in Teaching & Learning’: Engaging students through and beyond CBL
Involvement in a hackathon, especially having student ambassador insights into student engagement led to some staff understanding and reevaluating their own teaching practices.

Reactivating Active Learning: Active learning approaches as a way of enhancing student learning and engagement

Significance of active learning was reinforced during the hackathon and staff were motivated to explore a range of active learning approaches.

‘A Collaborative Environment’ - Impact of Mentor readiness to engage 

Hackathon mentors reported being generally well-prepared with experience in working with diverse teams and with varying pedagogical expertise. A clearer role definition and more guidance on the CBL cycle would have been helpful and to be considered in the next iteration.
 

Editing in progress: Video recording available soon!