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Adapting Hackathon-Honed Skills Toward Software Engineering Capstone

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Conference

2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Minneapolis, MN

Publication Date

August 23, 2022

Start Date

June 26, 2022

End Date

June 29, 2022

Conference Session

Software Engineering Division Technical Session 2

Page Count

11

DOI

10.18260/1-2--41732

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/41732

Download Count

251

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Paper Authors

biography

Shawn Jordan Arizona State University, Polytechnic Campus

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Shawn Jordan is an associate professor of engineering in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. He teaches context-centered electrical engineering and embedded systems design courses, and studies the use of context and storytelling in both K-12 and undergraduate engineering design education.

Jordan is PI on several NSF-funded projects related to design, including an National Science Foundation (NSF) Early CAREER Award entitled “CAREER: Engineering Design Across Navajo Culture, Community, and Society” and “Might Young Makers be the Engineers of the Future?,” and is a Co-PI on the NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments grant “Additive Innovation: An Educational Ecosystem of Making and Risk Taking.” He was named one of ASEE PRISM’s “20 Faculty Under 40” in 2014, and received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Obama in 2017.

Jordan co-developed the STEAM Labs™ program to engage middle and high school students in learning science, technology, engineering, arts, and math concepts through designing and building chain reaction machines. He founded and led teams to two collegiate Rube Goldberg Machine Contest national championships, and has appeared on many TV shows (including Modern Marvels on The History Channel and Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC) and a movie with his chain reaction machines. He serves on the Board of the i.d.e.a. Museum in Mesa, AZ, and worked as a behind-the scenes engineer for season 3 of the PBS engineering design reality TV show "Design Squad." He also held the Guinness World Record for the largest number of steps – 125 – in a working Rube Goldberg machine.

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biography

Cecilia La Place Arizona State University, Polytechnic Campus

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Cecilia La Place is a third-year Ph.D. student at Arizona State University (ASU) studying Engineering Education Systems & Design. She has received her M.S./B.S. in Software Engineering through an accelerated program at ASU. She organizes, attends, and studies hackathons as informal learning environments that hold the potential to empower students of any and all backgrounds.

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Abstract

Coding marathons known as hackathons are informal teaching and learning environments where students build skills they can use in class, and design innovative projects they can use to pursue industry employment. Though many elements of undergraduate engineering programs facilitate similar outcomes, students still seek out hackathons as a means to obtain more real-world experience. Prior work has shown that students are enticed to attend hackathons to take advantage of independent learning and networking opportunities. Prior work also suggests that hackathons engage students by incorporating a culture of teaching and learning through self-regulated learning, and through sharing and learning with other participants. This prompts the applicability of hackathons in the classroom and inquiry into students' transferable skills development. Exploring this query benefits students who struggle in class by examining alternative engagements and technical development opportunities. Extending existing work to examine if and how students develop and apply skills developed during hackathons in the classroom, the following research questions guided this study: 1. What technical knowledge do students use in capstones and hackathons? 2. Where do students learn the knowledge used in capstones and hackathons? 3. How does the software development process used by students differ between capstone and hackathon projects? This paper builds upon a previously published work in progress, finding that students who attended hackathons and a project-based learning Software Engineering degree, built transferable skills between hackathons and capstones. Participants described the employment of software design methodologies in both hackathons and capstone projects, various problem solving and researching approaches used, and a distinct level of attention to the context of development, informal or formal, to determine their courses of actions. Leveraging adaptive expertise as a lens to understand the development of learning mechanisms and problem-solving processes, we position hackathons as a valuable supplement to Computer Science and Software Engineering coursework as it engages students in project development, problem-solving, and learning through dynamic constraints.

Jordan, S., & La Place, C. (2022, August), Adapting Hackathon-Honed Skills Toward Software Engineering Capstone Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41732

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2022 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015