Training Industry Magazine - May/June 2020 - 53

STELLA LEE, PH.D.

WHAT'S NEXT
IN TECH

HACKATHONS AS A MEANS
TO CULTIVATE A LEARNING
ORGANIZATION
Many of us think of hackathons as
gatherings of technically-minded people
coming together to write computer
codes while looking sleep deprived.
While hackathons are deeply rooted in
the technological culture, today we see a
variety of hackathons, from solving climate
change challenges to promoting social
good. Participants with backgrounds as
diverse as marketing, human resources
and project management are taking
part in these events, working alongside
IT professionals. Broadly speaking, a
hackathon is a creative and collaborative
means of solving problems within a
limited time period. When designed
appropriately,
internal
hackathons
could work well for companies striving
to cultivate cultures of learning.
Here are a few ways hackathons
support organizational learning.
PEER-LED LEARNING
Hackathons require people to form teams
and work together to solve a problem.
The problems are usually complex and
authentic, requiring collaboration and a
variety of skill sets. The key to success
is maximizing diversity among team
members to reflect the diversity of
perspectives, experiences and domain
knowledges. This is a huge opportunity
for learning and development (L&D)
staff to learn from other departments
and units within the organizations. For
example, learning professionals can
learn more about data interpretations
from business analysts and storytelling
techniques from marketers. This
type of peer-led learning can help in
upskilling employees.

FAIL FAST
Hackathons usually last for a short
period of time. Participants won't have
time to come up with a perfect solution,
and the speed of execution is more
important than perfect execution. For this
reason, rapid prototyping is the norm.
Rapid prototyping is a design approach
consisting of ideation, prototyping and
testing. It starts with group ideation to
generate ideas; then, you create lo-fi
prototypes that are easily reproducible
with a paper-and-pencil sketch. Finally,
you test prototypes on users. In L&D,
we often focus on just one learning
solution, and stick with it throughout
the development cycle before getting
any feedback. The tight turnaround time
in hackathons encourages you to test
many ideas to increase the speed of
training design and development.

THE EXPERIMENTAL
NATURE OF
HACKATHONS HELPS
LEARNING LEADERS
ADOPT AN AGILE
MINDSET.
IDEA VALIDATION
Idea validation is the process of
testing and affirming your idea prior to
launching the product or service. User
testing is a common technique used
in hackathons. User testing allows the
designers to observe how users interact
with the product and receive direct input
from them. It is about putting yourself in
your users' shoes to determine whether

your solution offers value. Similarly, idea
validation can be applied in L&D by
testing your learning solutions with real
users, so that your design is feedback
driven and learner centered.
AGILE MINDSET
The experimental nature of hackathons
helps learning leaders adopt an agile
mindset. To have an agile mindset means
that you are open to diverse ideas and
continuous feedback, and moreover, you
are able to adjust accordingly. An agile
mindset is about learning and adapting,
so iteration is key. It is not unusual to see
hackathon teams go through several lofi prototypes before arriving at a final
solution within a couple of days. To put
it in the context of L&D, we can apply an
agile mindset in designing and delivering
our training and learning solutions by
pilot testing small increments of content,
collecting feedback from your learners,
and preparing to change your learning
design and approaches based on
the insights.
The ethos of hackathons is learning by
doing, and working together is crucial
for success. I challenge you to host a
hackathon at your organization to start
cultivating a learning culture.
Dr. Stella Lee has over 20 years of
experience in consulting, planning,
designing, implementing, and measuring
learning initiatives. Today, her focus is on
large-scale learning projects including
LMS evaluation and implementation,
learning analytics, and artificial intelligent
applications in learning. Email Stella.

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https://www.hackathon.guide/ https://climathon.climate-kic.org/en/ https://climathon.climate-kic.org/en/ https://www.vanhacks.com/ https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/rapid-prototyping-faking-it-until-you-make-it-in-a-ux-driven-world https://www.vanhacks.com/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/magazine

Training Industry Magazine - May/June 2020

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