The computing industry provides opportunities for students to demonstrate their skills through “Hackathons”.  Hackathons are open-ended, timed competitions where students design, prototype, and present pet projects.  The computer security industry has similar timed competitions known as Capture The Flag exercises (CTFs) where participants solve discrete challenge problems provided by the proctors.  The timed nature of both events limits student expression to what they already know or can quickly learn.

We use the time to teach them something new.  We combine the open-ended qualities of Hackathons and the discrete tasks of CTFs to teach students how to decompose problems.

We teach.  

Hackathons and CTFs are largely one-off experiences where teams are left to themselves. Participants have a chance to explore new ideas but the aggressive event schedule confines them to what they already know, and the project is often abandoned after.  

Our hybrid hackathons introduce students to new, challenging problems that demonstrate how to decompose a problem into actionable tasks such that knowledge gained is useful in the future.