What do you think about bringing hack-a-thons into curriculum?

I've been trying to advocate for this and I've gotten a lot of positive (and negative feedback, which I've addressed). Dean Puri really liked the idea and let me present it at the Dean's Council. Everyone there really liked it and they continue to come up to me and thank me for the presentation.

But please. PLEASE! Before you comment, read what I'm proposing below:

What is a hack-a-thon?

A competition that lasts 12-48 hours where people get into teams and build a prototype of an idea. At the end, projects are evaluated based on originality, usefulness, and completion. The best project wins.

Often, companies bring their new devices and access to their software to spread awareness of their products. They also sometimes give prizes for the team who best uses their product.

How would that be implemented?

An alternative to labs or assignments. Usually, the professor defines the application for the material. In this case, the students would define how they would apply the material.

They would still be evaluated, of course. Presentations could be evaluated by originality, completion, and coverage of the course. Professors could even state in-lecture, prior to the hacking, the content that needs to be covered.

TAs would have to be there to help out with topics that the students may not necessarily know, such as website-building.

The hack-a-thon model is not something that should be restricted to software. The material that is taught in engineering classrooms is applicable to real-life designs. Isn't that the premise of the McMaster Engineering Competition? You could even have companies come in with design problems and people need to figure out solutions to it.

Why?

• It's something that forces the students to take time to define the problems, promoting more creative solutions
• The engineering accreditation board is calling for an increase of experiential learning
• Team-building skills
• It's important that it happens within a short period of time because it avoids politics of team
• Valuable Project on people's resume
• Promotes innovation

Frequency

Probably 1-2 per course.

Sample Schedule

The schedule really depends on what the school is willing to do.

• If they're willing to do Saturdays, they could allow hacking from 8:30 to 20:00 and have teams present them in their tutorials on Monday.
• If they can free Fridays, they can do them all day Friday

Honestly, no offense at all, this is a constructive criticism: You need to do a lot of work on researching Engineering Graduate Attributes, and incorporate that into your pitch --- because that's curriculum, and you haven't addressed that at all in this pitch.

Then, you will only ever get the buy-in from Profs who care about the student experience. They have to do a lot of paperwork to tie this experience, into the graduate attributes that they are supposed to evaluate in their course.

That's the way it works. Did a year of research on this stuff myself.

Not sure if this would reduce the need for courses that don't suck.

I think having more hackathons or programming contests at McMaster would be a great idea, but I don't think integrating them into the curriculum would be good.

University is supposed to be more geared toward theoretical abstract learning, and adding hackathons in as assignments doesn't fit too well with pretty much all of the software/computer.science courses, with maybe the exception of SFWR ENG 3A04. Hackathons really only work well with apps and simple gadgets; I have a hard time seeing anyone do anything meaning full in 24-48 hours with a course like SFWR ENG 3F03 or SFWR ENG 4AA4.

I sit on several committees that overlook voting on curriculum changes, I have a few comments:

What are some core competencies that these courses offer?
How can the course be sustainable when it is centered around a 2 day event when the term is 3 months long?
How can the content of your course fit in with the curriculum?
What are the key performance indicators for these courses that offer hackathon's as apart of the curriculum.

In the business faculty, we have a course called 4EL3, which is a commerce elective where students who are highly involved in intensive extra curricular activities are given credits. But these are often year long commitments that require tons of report writing and are way more intense than a simple hackathon. In these courses, it is usually overlooked by a 1 on 2 student to faculty ratio for these 4EL3 credits.

How can you compare your experiential learning course with other faculties as a standard metric?

These are just some questions to consider.

Originally Posted by allanandthera

I sit on several committees that overlook voting on curriculum changes, I have a few comments:

What are some core competencies that these courses offer?
How can the course be sustainable when it is centered around a 2 day event when the term is 3 months long?
How can the content of your course fit in with the curriculum?
What are the key performance indicators for these courses that offer hackathon's as apart of the curriculum.

In the business faculty, we have a course called 4EL3, which is a commerce elective where students who are highly involved in intensive extra curricular activities are given credits. But these are often year long commitments that require tons of report writing and are way more intense than a simple hackathon. In these courses, it is usually overlooked by a 1 on 2 student to faculty ratio for these 4EL3 credits.

How can you compare your experiential learning course with other faculties as a standard metric?

These are just some questions to consider.

It's not quite the same with engineering curriculum you see. Engineering curriculum has to satisfy standards according to the Canadian engineering accreditation board. Those standards include the measurement of 12 attributes (Mac eng added a 13th --- sustainability) and their are competencies within those attributes that only individual departments know; i.e. You have to ask your department to know which courses are measuring which competency.

Originally Posted by mike_302

You need to do a lot of work on researching Engineering Graduate Attributes, and incorporate that into your pitch --- because that's curriculum

I don't think I understand. Are you suggesting curriculum can only change when the graduate curriculum changes?

Originally Posted by GeorgeLucas

Not sure if this would reduce the need for courses that don't suck.

The thing that usually sucks about courses is that you have no idea how to use the material. These would help you realize the applications.

Originally Posted by Ownaginatios

University is supposed to be more geared toward theoretical abstract learning, and adding hackathons in as assignments doesn't fit too well with pretty much all of the software/computer.science courses, with maybe the exception of SFWR ENG 3A04. Hackathons really only work well with apps and simple gadgets; I have a hard time seeing anyone do anything meaning full in 24-48 hours with a course like SFWR ENG 3F03 or SFWR ENG 4AA4.

The professors teach material that is theoretical, yes, but in hopes that it can be applied. Here are some sample projects for some courses (p.s. i'm not sure what the new curriculum courses are):

• ELEC ENG 2CI5: USB Wall adapter
• SFWR ENG 2DM3: map with shortest path between buildings on campus
• SFWR ENG 2FA3: using regular expressions to make browser extensions
• SFWR ENG 2MX3: arduino/altera digital to analog sensors
• SFWR ENG 3F03: a bash script

Also, I'm not suggesting hack-a-thons in the regular sense of hack-a-thons, but rather suggesting the hack-a-thon model. What I mean is something that you can apply to any engineering course, not just software engineering.

Originally Posted by allanandthera

I sit on several committees that overlook voting on curriculum changes, I have a few comments:

What are some core competencies that these courses offer?

These would not be courses, but rather, evaluations within existing courses.

Originally Posted by allanandthera

How can the course be sustainable when it is centered around a 2 day event when the term is 3 months long?

You could say the same thing about exams.

Originally Posted by allanandthera

What are the key performance indicators for these courses that offer hackathon's as apart of the curriculum.

In the business faculty, we have a course called 4EL3, which is a commerce elective where students who are highly involved in intensive extra curricular activities are given credits. But these are often year long commitments that require tons of report writing and are way more intense than a simple hackathon. In these courses, it is usually overlooked by a 1 on 2 student to faculty ratio for these 4EL3 credits.

How can you compare your experiential learning course with other faculties as a standard metric?

These are just some questions to consider.

I want to try something new and I don't know how it will perform. I know that people who do hackathons and have projects under their belt get much better jobs than those who don't. People don't really fill in surveys for hack-a-thons, so it's difficult to gauge whether people who do them get better marks than those who don't.

[quote=goatandsheep;41 5774]I don't think I understand. Are you suggesting curriculum can only change when the graduate curriculum changes?

No. Grad Attributes are set by the CEAB (Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board) and are things that a school as to prove students are getting in order to become an accredited engineering school in Canada. This is done in courses. Example, course A has students getting attribute 1 and 2, course B provides attribute 3, etc. It has nothing to do with Graduate School

https://www.engineerscanada.c a/can...ditation-board

Mike would be able to explain it better

Originally Posted by goatandsheep

I don't think I understand. Are you suggesting curriculum can only change when the graduate curriculum changes?

No. Grad Attributes are set by the CEAB (Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board) and are things that a school as to prove students are getting in order to become an accredited engineering school in Canada. This is done in courses. Example, course A has students getting attribute 1 and 2, course B provides attribute 3, etc. It has nothing to do with Graduate School

https://www.engineerscanada.c a/can...ditation-board

Mike would be able to explain it better

Originally Posted by GCSM

No. Grad Attributes are set by the CEAB (Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board) and are things that a school as to prove students are getting in order to become an accredited engineering school in Canada. This is done in courses. Example, course A has students getting attribute 1 and 2, course B provides attribute 3, etc. It has nothing to do with Graduate School

https://www.engineerscanada.c a/can...ditation-board

Mike would be able to explain it better

Who is Mike?

Also, I've consulted people on the Canadian board about the suggestion. They liked it, too. Accreditation is strange. They accredit a curriculum, not a set of courses. You could even have a curriculum that didn't use courses, but people prefer to have courses. So I could make this a course, but I prefer to push this as a type of evaluation that could be used in courses.

The thing that usually sucks about courses is that you have no idea how to use the material. These would help you realize the applications.

Software Department at McMaster is an underdog compared to other universities. It offers just the bare minimum to be considered Software Engineering program, that's a fact.

Originally Posted by GeorgeLucas

Software Department at McMaster is an underdog compared to other universities. It offers just the bare minimum to be considered Software Engineering program, that's a fact.

I used to think that too. Someone pointed out to me that SE at Mac isn't trying to prepare you to become a coder, that's not what SE is about. SE is about learning how to design good systems, and have someone else do most of the coding. Unfortunately, this isn't what most companies that have entry level SE positions are looking for. This is a more upper level position.

I agree that some courses can seem pointless sometimes depending on what you are planning on doing with your degree. Myself, I don't think I will really ever use the material in 3DX4, and 4AA4 again, but you still need to take them as it is an important part of SE.

McMaster does need to increase the number of courses offered for technical electives in upper years, as right now it is really limited. But if you compare UW's curriculum to Mac's, they are quite similar.

I used to think that too. Someone pointed out to me that SE at Mac isn't trying to prepare you to become a coder, that's not what SE is about.

Yeah, that's true. But hey, that's not what they advertise, is it now?

Imagine how much different the whole thing would be if the McMaster Student Calendar said "Our Software Engineering Program is only for people who can, love, and know how to code, we don't teach you that stuff here, y'all".

Originally Posted by GeorgeLucas

Software Department at McMaster is an underdog compared to other universities. It offers just the bare minimum to be considered Software Engineering program, that's a fact.

This is irrelevant in this thread. I'm suggesting a new type of evaluation that will improve all engineering courses.