Objective:
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This toolkit is designed to support University staff involved in teaching to integrate hackathons into their pedagogicapproach. It brings together research insights, staff interviews, existing resources, and institutional priorities to create a practical guide for designing and running impactful hackathon-style learning experiences.
Hackathons are team based, problem-based activities, where participants work creatively, often under time constraints to develop a product, service or idea that responds to real world challenge. Hackathons are an exciting instrument, engaging staff in re-imagining learning and teaching, and students in learning a wide variety of skills for Enterprise: ideation, teamwork, research, innovation, communication.
Overview:
Originally developed by staff at kingston university across Enterprise Education, Education for Sustainability, and the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Centre and co-funded by the EEUK Impact Fund, the toolkit is intended for widedissemination. Our hope is to inspire a broader community of practice across higher education institutions.
Quotes throughout the guide are drawn from interviews and feedback shared by staff and partners who have delivered or supported hackathons. We are grateful for their contributions.
The toolkit uses Sustainability as a central theme to illustrate how hackathons can be applied. While this is a strong and increasingly urgent area, many other themes across health, equity, education, technology, and beyond can and should be explored through hackathons. Sustainability simply offers a clear, recognisable lens for framing the examples in this guide.
Activity:
A hackathon is a time-bound, challenge-based learning experience where students work collaboratively often in interdisciplinary teams to solve real-world problems. Rooted in active pedagogies like Design Thinking, hackathons focus on problem discovery, idea generation, solution prototyping, and presentation.
They are structured problem-solving events that originated from coding but are now widely used across disciplines to explore real-world issues and develop future-facing skills.
Hackathons typically involve:
· Working in groups
· Exploring a problem
· Generating and pitching a solution
· Receiving feedback
They can be fast-paced, light-touch sessions, or embedded, multi-week learning experiences. The goal is not "right answers" but curiosity, creativity, and application. It can be used to help deliver a short in-class activity, a multi-week group challenge, or an institution-wide initiative.
Skill Development:
Hackathons offer strong pedagogical benefits, being grounded in student-centered and active learning approaches, where learners take ownership of their ideas, work in teams, and apply knowledge in real-world contexts (e.g., Hart et al, 2023). This experiential format enhances engagement, deepens understanding, and supports the development ofgraduate attributes such as creativity, critical thinking, cooperation, teamwork, and resilience.
This methodology also promotes collaboration with the wider community by bringing together universities, businesses, NGOs,and governments. It enriches the learning experience and builds meaningful university–business partnerships that can lead to long-term impact and systemic change. For organisations, they create value by helping to identify and solve the real challenges they face.
Resources:
You don’t need a specific subject or structure to get started. The most important thing is that students:
- Collaborate
- Think creatively and critically
- Present their ideas in some form
The Planning & Designing section helps University staff shape their hackathon to fit their module, timeline, and student cohort. Whether they are working solo or collaborating with colleagues or external partners, the guide will help:
- Choose a suitable challenge or theme
- Align it with learning outcomes
- Design a brief and structure the session(s)
- Decide how to run the event (timing, team size, format)
References:
Green Jobs Taskforce (2021) Report to government, industry and the skills sector. Green Jobs Taskforce report. http://publishing.service.gov.uk. Accessed 25 Feb 202
Hart JL, Bott-Knutson RC, Appel H, Kotinek J, Knox P, Ziegler W (2023) Pedagogy of engagement, innovation, andreflection: hackathons. Honors Educ 19:125–128
South London Partnership (2021) A WPI Economics and Institute for Employment Studies Report for Central London Forward, Local London, South London Partnership and West London Alliance.https://southlondonpartnership.co.uk/economy/green-jobs-and-skills-report-phase-1-and-2/. Accessed 12 Sep 2024
Happonen, A., Minashkina, D., Nolte, A., & Angarita, M. A. M. (2020, May). Hackathons as a company–University collaboration tool to boost circularity innovations and digitalization enhanced sustainability. In AIP Conference Proceedings (Vol. 2233, No. 1). AIP Publishing.
The Double Diamond model can be accessed at: The Double Diamond - Design Council- accessed on 14 July 2025 TheUN SDGs can be found at: THE 17 GOALS | Sustainable Development- accessed on 14 July 2025