Hackathons: a challenged-based learning (CBL) tool in entrepreneurship education

Entrepreneurship education (EE) is pivotal within the higher education landscape, playing a fundamental role in equipping future leaders with the tools to address societal, environmental and economic challenges, including existential environmental issues. Rapid innovations in this area have resulted in a plethora of experiential and collaborative methodologies, such as challenge-based learning (CBL) and events like hackathons. In recognition of EE’s importance in addressing future challenges, three European universities collaborated to develop a trans-national, multi-disciplinary EE programme based on CBL methodology in a hackathon setting. The case study presented in this paper details a residential (overnight) hackathon that employed the CBL methodology to facilitate an interdisciplinary group of university students to address circular economy (CE) issues. Through an in-depth analysis of this hackathon, we examined the experiences of participants and facilitators to establish whether residential hackathons can foster collaboration, ideation, prototyping and problem-solving skills among participants. Data were collected through participant observations, interviews and analysis of artefacts produced during the event. The findings show that the residential hackathon, using a CBL framework, advanced the EE process improving collaboration between students and provided practical experiential learnings for addressing real-world challenges.