Skip to content

Lower the barriers to entry for Student Hackathons §

Pattern Summary §

Offer pre-event training for participants and mentors to ensure that students of all skill levels can participate meaningfully in a hackathon.

Problem / Challenge §

Hackathons risk becoming exclusive to students who already have advanced technical skills. This limits both the diversity and number of participants who can meaningfully contribute to hackathons.

Compared to PhD students or more experienced peers, less experienced participants (e.g. undergraduates or students new to a particular tool or language) may believe they don’t have the necessary skills or knowledge to participate in a hackathon.

Mentors recruited from industry may be highly technically skilled but unfamiliar with how to work effectively with students at varying levels of experience. Without preparation, their mentorship may unintentionally favour advanced participants or fail to meet the needs of those who need more support.

Pattern Category §

  • Community Building
  • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
  • Education & Skills
  • Promoting Best Practices

Context §

A university OSPO is organizing or co-organizing a student hackathon.

The event is intended to be open to students across different programs and levels of experience - from undergraduates to postgraduates.

Some mentors are being recruited from industry rather than academia.

Forces §

Staff have the capacity to organize and/or deliver pre-training in advance of the event itself.

Solution §

Design and deliver a pre-event preparation programme that addresses the needs of both participants and mentors before the hackathon begins.

The solution below outlines some core activities to consider:

Offer optional technical pre-training for participants §

  • Identify the core tools and skills that participants will need to engage with the hackathon challenges. Examples of relevant training include introductions to GitHub, Python or Jupyter Notebooks.
  • Offer short, accessible training sessions in advance of the event that allow less experienced students to get up to speed.
  • Framing these sessions as 'optional but useful' encourages participation without implying that students who attend are less capable.

Deliver mentor training ahead of the event §

  • Recruit mentors with enough lead time to provide them with a dedicated preparation session before the hackathon.
  • Depending on the event’s theme, training may explore cover how to work effectively with students at different skill levels and what to expect from participants who are newer to the domain.

This is particularly important for industry mentors who may not have recent experience working in an academic or educational setting.

Communicate the multi-skill-level ethos clearly §

Make it explicit in all event communications that the hackathon is designed for multiple skill levels and that support is available.

This sets expectations for both participants and mentors and helps to create an environment where less experienced students feel genuinely welcome.

During the event §

Where possible, provide a range of contribution opportunities for beginner-friendly issues (e.g. documentation, simple bug fixes).

Resulting Context §

Pre-event training demonstrates that the OSPO is invested in participant success and models the importance of inclusive participation in open source.

There is greater opportunity for students of all skill levels to participate meaningfully and learn about open source practices.

Mentor preparation improves the quality of support available on the day and reduces the risk of less experienced participants being overlooked.

Additional Learning from UT-OSPO, University of Texas at Austin §

We encourage multiple skill levels at our hackathons. We offer pre-training to support this. At a recent hackathon, we delivered training on how to get started with GitHub, and also on Jupyter Notebooks and Python.

We also provide mentor training beforehand. Some of our mentors come from industry and the training focuses on how to work with students.

Known Instances §

References §

Contributors & Acknowledgement §

  • Angela Newell, University of Texas at Austin
  • Ciara Flanagan, https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3153-7673
  • David Lippert, George Washington University, https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6444-9595
  • Emily Lovell, University of California Santa Cruz, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5531-5956
  • Laura Langdon, University of California, Davis
  • Tom Hughes, Carnegie Mellon University, https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7516-3687