Hackathon! Design Gamified eLearning in Hours

You have probably done eLearning development in any ofseveral different ways. These might include: individual contributors workingalone or as a member of a project management task force; teams organized aroundspecific sub-tasks; brainstorming; crowd-sourcing. But what about hosting a hackathonas a design and development approach for eLearning?

A hackathon, you say? What’s that?

A hackathon is an event in which programmers, designers, andothers collaborate on a development project, frequently involving softwaredevelopment but also for instructional applications, and even (with lesstechnical input) for civic and social purposes. Hackathons aren’t new;according to Wikipedia, the developers of OpenBSD and the marketing team at Suncoined the term to describe two events in 1999.

Hackathons usually have a specific focus and can last from afew hours to several days, with participants working in the same physicallocation during that time. Participants may work as individuals or in teams,and at the end of the hackathon it is usual for them to present their results asa “pitch” to a panel of judges. Participant incentives generally include cashprizes or merchandise: hardware and software.

Participants can come from a variety of backgrounds; infact, it’s better if they do. Diversity is important in a hackathon. In aneLearning development context, some participants would know how to write codeor to use authoring software, some would be graphic designers, some managers,some instructional designers, some software engineers, and so on.

What are the benefits of doing development this way?

Hackathons offer unique benefits, including going beyond thosethat brainstorming and crowd-sourcing provide. In addition to getting a projectstarted quickly, hackathon benefits include the establishment of communities ofinterest within companies, between companies, and in the developer community atlarge. Hackathons can be in-house or they can be public. For the hostingcompany, a public hackathon can be a recruiting tool. Public or privatehackathons can be a means of identifying individuals with the talent theorganization needs for particular projects. Contacts with local developers canalso be significant for the organization.

Needless to say, there are reciprocal benefits for theattendees: cash or merchandise prizes, finding a job, making a lateral move, orgetting a contract gig. In addition, participants can benefit from peer-to-peerlearning and networking. Coming in first isn’t the only reason talented peopleparticipate.

Although a hackathon is a very effective way to kick-startdevelopment, it is not necessarily a one-time event. In fact, there areadvantages to conducting follow-on hackathons to continue the developmentprocess from basic design to actual code, creation of media, dealing withchange management issues, and internal or external marketing of the resultinginstructional products.

At the end of this article, I’ve included some links toresources that may help you decide whether a hackathon would be appropriate foryour situation, and guidelines for putting one together. But at this point, I’dlike to offer an example of a hackathon applied to eLearning, specifically tohigh-level design of a gamified approach to certification preparation.

The Certification Game

The Certification Game Hackathon took place November 15,2014, sponsored by The Certification Game, an Austin, Texas startup companywhich aims to provide online asynchronous courses for people to prepare forvarious professional certifications. The company plans to incorporate games andgamification concepts in its courses to make them more engaging, to facilitatelearning, and to improve learner results—more certifications, achieved in lesstime. The concept is “Serious learning, not so boring.” Their intent is toraise the middle class, by helping people to get certified, progress in theircareers, and advance to a better job. (Fulldisclosure: one of the founders of The Certification Game is Ron Muns, who ison the board of The eLearning Guild, the parent company of LearningSolutions Magazine.)

What happened in Austin?

Ron Muns and Cole Leslie, founders of The CertificationGame, invited software and game developers from Texas, particularly the Austinand Dallas-Fort Worth areas, to participate. They decided to offer a prize of$1,000 for the best solution presentation delivered at the end of thehackathon. They picked four judges (I was one of them).

A total of 27 developers accepted the invitation, and eachof those individuals received a copy of the certification objectives for aspecific professional organization, together with a description of the goal ofthe session, the prize, and the venue.

On the day of the hackathon, which ran from noon to 5 PM on acold, rainy Saturday at the Capital Factory in downtown Austin, eightparticipants arrived. It’s not uncommon for 30 percent to 75 percent of peopleregistering for a public hackathon to not attend, so this wasn’t a bad showing,especially considering the weather. A hackathon is about doing serious work ina relaxed setting, without becoming a social event in and of itself or aconsensus activity.

Kicking off the event

Ron and Cole opened the hackathon by explaining the aims ofthe company and the goal of the event. Ron reflected:

Many of you get pressured to builda course, and another course, and another course, and you never get to do itthe way you’d like. Some of the fun-based approaches, the immersive learning,you don’t have time to do. What we want to do, for one certification afteranother, is build five to ten certifications to start. We will bring people onboard, subject-matter experts and curriculum developers, to do that, accordingto a scalable, workable model which you are going to help us create today. Andafter that, we will be able to continue building many more certificationcourses. But this is Day One: finding the right methodology.

Participants signed a copy of the very simple agreement withThe Certification Game; the text barely took up a half page. All participantsand the company have the right to use anything created during the hackathon.Participants agreed, however, not to develop a training program focused oncertification, and that the logo of The Certification Game belongs to thecompany.

The four judges were introduced. The judges all hadbackgrounds relating to learning, in instructional design, coding/authoring, management,and psychology or human behavior.

Who were the participants?

All of the participants had two things in common: they enjoybuilding things, and they enjoy designing and/or building games. Other thanthat, they came with different backgrounds and different interests:

Dennis and Leah Bartlett, husband and wife, workedas a team; Dennis is an NGS engineer and software evangelist, and a websitedesigner for 17 years. Leah is a graphic designer and blogger.

Alvaro (“Call me Al,” he said) Montoro, softwareengineer and developer, experienced hackathoner. Al has developed HTML5 gamesfor classroom use.

Kelly Burns, eLearning facilitator,instructional designer for drillinginfo in Austin (software platform for theoil and gas industry), with experience in assessment design.

Heidi Ratzlaff, designer of games that involvephysical pieces and movement, currently working on games that use wooden piecesand boards, with an interest in games from centuries past, puzzles, and gamesthat teach without seeming to (stealth teaching).

CC Cooper, experienced in building and managingtraining teams and in course design. She is moving into talent development fromtraining. CC attended mainly to observe the process and because she thinks theconcept of using games to teach is “amazing.”

Calvin Bench and Michael Crowther, computerscience students at the University of Texas with a background in graphic designand an interest in UI/UX design, also worked as a team.

The details

After the participant introductions, Cole and Ron provided afew final details:

Participants were not expected to do coding,although that would be acceptable; Leah Bartlett characterized this hackathonas a “design-a-thon.” The design was what was desired.
The modelfor The Certification Game is different from the models for Khan Academy,Udacity, Lumosity, etc. It was clear that Cole and Ron admire those companies,but they want to be different from them—and better. The differences were exploredbriefly.
Ron gave an overview of the more than 260learning objectives in the help desk certification standard provided to theparticipants, how certification standards are developed (for example, “Whatshould a front-line analyst know?”), and an overview of the hackathonobjectives.
The games for The Certification Game shouldteach content and help memory retention and focus, rather than being “learningtheory” games.
At the end of the hackathon, participants wouldbe expected to present their ideas. The prize decision would be made over theweekend and announced on Monday.

At this point, the three and a half hours for the hackathonbegan. Pizza, snack food, and beverages were available in the back of the room.The room was nearly silent the whole time, just the occasional quiet comment,soft chuckle, or murmur of satisfaction as ideas came together.

Ron commented,

With the intentset to create a clever way to design online courses that incorporate games or gamification,participants had a challenge ahead of them. This is a complex problem for severalreasons. It is a challenge to make asynchronous learning more engaging and interactive,as there are no instructors, and the course content is entirely pre-determined.Another tough task is in creating something that delivers on the hype that gamification is currently garnering. Designing acourse that uses more than badges and leaderboards in order to make on-demand coursesthat people actually enjoy, and that are not just a chore or job requirement,is not easy.

Presentations and the winner

At four o’clock, Cole called time, and the presentationsbegan. Ron and Cole provided this summary:

The results were interesting and diverse.Calvin Bench and Michael Crowther came up with an idea to hold an event-based courseand coined it “Certify.” Imagine employees coming together to go through a coursethat is modeled like an Easter egg hunt. Using their smart phones, participantsfollow a map to different “eggs” located around a space. Each egg is a learningobjective of the course. Participants study and are quizzed on the content of thatstation either by planting the hardware there, or by deploying iBeacons. One greatfeature of this style of course is that it gets learners moving. Research has shown that movement enhances learning.

Another great idea came from HeidiRatzlaff. She proposed basing a course on humor, and offering personalization. Whattype of joke do you like? What are your preferred colors? Do you never want to hearthat annoying sound again? Those were some of the questions she proposed, all inan effort to give learners a more personalized and humorous experience.

In the end, the $1,000 grand prizewas awarded to Kelly Burns for her idea “Trial and Error.” This course design methodologyis based on Choose Your Own Adventure-type books. In this style of course, participantsare presented with multiple options for a problem or question and, depending onthe option they choose, the course will take a different direction. Aparticularly clever aspect of this course design is that it makes the learner want to repeat the content several timesin order to know what would happen had they made a different choice at certain junctions.They become intrinsically motivated to repeat the course and, as we all know, repetitionis the father of learning. Mixed with her recommendations for tools and LMS’s, Kelly’sidea resonated best with the judges.

These brief explanations describethe basics of three of the course designs, and there were nuances and details ofeach that made all the submissions impressive. There were also several other greatdesigns from some very intelligent and talented people, and the positive and collaborativespirit of the event made for a fun time.

Some advice from the hosts of the Certification Game hackathon

To close, Ron and Cole would liketo offer a few tips on what they found to be good practices for running a hackathon:

Use event marketingsites—Eventbrite, Meetup, and ChallengePost are all great places to post a hackathon.
Expect 40 to50 percent turnout—experience shows that only a certain percentage of registeredparticipants will actually show up. This was confirmed at our event and repeatedby Capital Factory staff, who have hosted many hackathons.
Don’t overwhelmwith detail—keep it as simple as possible, and stay general, if you can, sothat you do not lose attention or hinder creativity.
Offer a cleardeliverable—even while keeping things simple and general, make sure to be specificon what the final outcome will look like.
Let participantspresent their ideas—rather than just having them submit their work for review, takethe time to have them present. This way, they get to fully explain their ideas,and the other people at the hackathon get to benefit from hearing different ideas.
Offer plentyof food and drink—if you are asking for participants to work for free, don’t getcheap on the fuel.
Make it fun—askingpeople to give up time after work, or on a weekend, is tough, so keep it relaxedand fun; it’s not supposed to be like work, even though it is work.