Often spelled hack-a-thon. Sometimes called a code sprint or innovation sprint. Distinct from a longer challenge by the time pressure and team format.
A hackathon is a short, intensive event — typically 24 to 72 hours — where teams build a working prototype against a brief or open problem. The format originated in software development and now spans hardware, design, business cases, and policy.
The practical strength of a hackathon is energy and team formation: people meet collaborators they would not have found otherwise, and the time pressure forces decision-making. The practical limit is depth: a 48-hour prototype rarely becomes the most CV-relevant artefact a student produces. Hackathons are useful as one signal among many; they are weaker as the central piece of a portfolio.
Ewance is structurally different from a hackathon — challenges run on 1-4 week cycles, not 48 hours, and the deliverable goes through a full rubric-based assessment rather than a panel-style judging. The two are complements: a student can run several hackathons during their degree and several Ewance challenges, and the deliverables sit alongside each other in the portfolio.
The fastest way to know whether challenge-based learning fits you is to ship one.
