About

What is #LearnHack?

If you have ever attended a hackathon, you will have experienced the buzz of diverse people coming together to tackle issues around a specific theme or problem. Hackathons are perfect peer learning environments, a breeding ground for new ideas and new connections. #LearnHack wants to give anyone at UCL a voice and an opportunity to shape how we do things at UCL, and, in particular, how we use technology for teaching and learning.

Why #LearnHack?

#LearnHack is about learning to hack as well as hacking to learn. Our events provide an opportunity for non-techies to add their particular expertise to what would otherwise be a very tech focused affair.  The event provides an opportunity to pick up practical tech skills as non-techies tackle challenges alongside those who already come equipped with tools and tech knowledge. Meanwhile, techies get to apply their skills to real-world problems and pass on their skills to others. Bonus: attendees get to make connections across departmental and hierarchical boundaries to form one big learning community with one aim: making the UCL experience better for everyone.

We welcome anyone, regardless of background, discipline, academic hierarchy or skill level, and we are proud of hosting hackathons that consistently attract brilliantly diverse audiences from across our institution. We're casual, friendly and in constant beta. 🤓

Community & Collaboration

Naturally #LearnHack is a community effort and every edition has input from a broad variety of collaborators from across UCL. Event organisation and administration is predominantly led by a couple of folks from Digital Education with additional support from Advanced Research Computing (ARC). 

Previous event partners were UCL Library Services, UCL Innovation and Enterprise, UCLU TechSoc, the UCL Doctoral Skills Development Programme, UCL Advances, The Open University, LAIRN and oneM. #LearnHack is currently supported by the Centre for Engineering Education and the Centre for Humanities Education at UCL. 

We have come a long way from our first event in 2015! 🎉