Thomas Lancaster – @DrLancaster
Coventry University

This presentation will discuss the use of social media to develop an empowered community of students looking to enhance their learning beyond that of their peers. A student hackathon social media community formed at a UK university during the 2015-2016 academic year will be used to provide illustrative examples.

Hackathons are collaborative computer programming events where teams produce software applications, develop websites, construct solutions using computer hardware components or just explore ideas that are new to them. Participation in hackathons allows students to take control of their own learning and to simulate industry styles of working impossible within the classroom. In industry, employees are expected to achieve proficiency with new technologies as needed within short timeframes. Many hackathons expect participants to physically attend. Other hackathons are held solely online, facilitated through specialist social media sites such as Devpost, where teams can be formed, ideas discussed, entries submitted and prizes from sponsors awarded.

Hackathons are of interest beyond Computing. Other academic disciplines hold similar events. Examples include business start-up weekends, where entrepreneurs seek to validate an idea for a new company, and composition competitions, where musicians are challenged to develop and perform original music.

Social media forms an implicit part of all modern industry-standard computer programming and this view is inherited into the hackathon community. Social media sites forming part of a computing student’s professional online presence, such as Github,,are used to share code, allow collaboration with others and provide online portfolio evidence of a student’s ability. Social media discussion sites, such as Slack, are used for internal community. Social media driven forums, such as SlackOverflow, are used to help programmers solicit support and share good practice. All of these social media entities have to be considered an essential part of current computing, programming and hackathon support for aspiring students.

The development of the internal social media driven hackathon community was intended primarily to afford students on computing courses with further opportunities that would improve their employability. For instance, this would enable students to engage with technology and programming languages of interest to industry but which could not be directly taught to them during their course. High performing students would be empowered to work together, develop additional projects for their social media portfolios and enhance their own learning.