Education Hackathon: accelerating innovation in education
Baylor College of Medicine’s Huffington Department of Education, Innovation and Technology is a central home for educational innovation within the institution. In commitment to academic innovation, the department hosts an annual Education Hackathon. Consisting of a kickoff event with speakers such as Dr. Neil Osheroff and a subsequent pitch day, the Education Hackathon brings faculty, staff and students from across Baylor and its affiliates together to work quickly on solving real-world education problems. For three years, teams competing in the Education Hackathon have created incredible education-focused projects. We’ve asked two previous winners to share their experience:
2024 winner: Dr. Matthew Blank
The 2024 winning hackathon project, STEMM Trading Floor, connects educators across various academic stages to exchange insights, strategies, products and best practices. The goal was for this exchange to cultivate a stronger, more unified approach to ultimately inspire and prepare future leaders in the STEMM workforce. We recruited teams of Baylor STEMM professionals (researchers, clinicians or educators), graduate students and K–12 science educators, who participated in shadowing experiences. Teams contributed their perspectives and guidance toward a final virtual guidebook that provides STEMM professionals with a roadmap for translating their work for a K-12 audience. Although only seven months into this work, feedback already highlights the incredible value of knowledge exchange across stages. One participant reflected that the experience “reinforced the immense value of diverse perspectives in education, particularly for our earliest learners” and “broadened [their] perspective as a health science educator.” This work is an exciting paradigm shift where scientists and educators mutually benefit from bidirectional knowledge-sharing to disseminate their research, apply educational approaches from the K–12 setting into their own experience, and inspire them to appreciate the significance of empowering future generations in STEMM.
2023 winner: Dr. Sarah Keyes
Competing in the Education Hackathon was one of the most interesting opportunities I have had at Baylor. I worked with educators across Baylor (who I might not otherwise have worked with) and with collaborating faculty at Lee College to create a financial literacy course for learners and alumni at Baylor. Addressing the issues of financial literacy and well-being in learners is increasingly recognized as a requirement by accrediting bodies and as what is best for our learners, but building such curricula – deciding what to include and how to make it active and engaging – is much less explicit. Coming together as a team with diverse disciplinary backgrounds helped us to create a curriculum applicable to learners at Baylor and to acknowledge larger systemic forces that influence financial well-being. That curriculum is now used across Baylor for all learners, and we hope to publish the work as an Innovations Report in Medical Science Educator. Competing at Pitch Day was a real opportunity to argue for our idea and left all of us feeling excited and invigorated!
To learn more about the Educational Hackathon and how you can sign up, please visit the Huffington Department of Education, Innovation and Technology website.
By the Department of Education Innovation and Technology Hackathon Committee
