hackED accelerates grassroots, progressive innovation in higher education.
hackED programs take place on campuses across Canada. We work with campus communities across the nation to spark collaborative conversations through hackED Roundtables; to ideate and prototype change at their schools through hackED Projects; and to facilitate, inspire, and support education changemakers through the hackED Platform.
Roundtables are the foundation of hackED’s programs. These are grassroots, generative conversations about the problems students and educators face in their schools – and the innovations that might transform them.
We provide easy-to-follow frameworks for hackED Hosts to run their own Roundtables, from booking space on campus to taking action afterwards.
Roundtables bring together students, faculty, and staff to discuss challenges and opportunities at your school. Together, you’ll recognize and prioritize the problems that matter most and begin to dream up solutions to them.
Afterwards, your ideas go to the hackED Platform, where students and educators from across the country can see what you’ve come up with and offer their own feedback.
You can then organize hackED Projects to respond to these ideas on your campus, prototyping solutions and provoking change.
This Fall semester, Roundtables take place in October. Click here to find one near you.
hackED Projects move from ideas to action.
How might you prototype the solution you imagine quickly and easily? What action can you take to learn more about the change you want to make?
A core tenet of the practice of innovation is to develop ideas iteratively; to rapidly move to testing and then return to design and development with knowledge about how the idea actually works (or not).
That’s what hackED Projects are all about: getting our ideas out into the real world so that others might engage with and improve them, and so that we can test whether they might have the impact we think they’ll have.
We encourage multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder teams to work together on hackED Projects. Students, faculty, and staff working together will help ensure that your idea is a feasible, viable, and desirable innovation in your campus community.
Interested in pursuing a hackED Project? You’ll find the hackED Project Guide here as soon as it’s ready for the 2016-2017 year.
Roundtable dialogues and Project ideas are translated into cross-country problems and solutions on the hackED Platform.
Post the problems and solutions you’ve surfaced on your campus. See what others have recognized and rectified. Discuss the challenges with and opportunities for change.
Maybe someone has already solved your problem – or maybe you can help someone else!
We recently rebranded from RECODE Collaborate to hackED! Our vision is the same, and we’re still an initiative of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation’s RECODE programs. The rebranding was completed to clear up some confusion about the difference between RECODE and RECODE Collaborate.
hackED is now recruiting for the Winter 2016-2017 semester. Sign up by February 10!
We’re looking for leaders at your school to help launch, organize, and promote hackED events and initiatives. In doing so, you’re sure to learn more about leadership and innovation – and play a major role in a movement happening across the country.
Submit the form to join our mailing list and to discover opportunities to get involved with hackED.
If you’re not sure you’re a good fit for on-campus organizing but you’re interested in other roles with hackED, we are always accepting applications for volunteers who are also passionate about rethinking higher education.
We are a group of students across Canada who are passionate about the future of our higher education system. What started as a random conversation at a conference in January of 2015 has manifested this passion into hackED—an open innovation forum for grassroots projects in Canada.
We created hackED for two reasons. First, we want to support students, faculty, staff, and the community with the resources necessary to inspire grassroots innovation at our universities and colleges. Second, administrative and policy conversations often lack opportunities for bottom-up innovation from our campus communities. By creating a framework and a forum for students and educators to express their challenges, discuss solutions, and organize that data, we are collectively better prepared to advocate for ourselves.
We are always interested in expanding our team of volunteers! Get in touch.
Across the country, hackED Roundtables where communities are discussing the higher education system are taking place. These roundtables are a catalyst for the conversations on this platform; students can identify challenges, come up with solutions, vote for their favourites, and then join the teams prototyping those ideas through hackED Projects. The results of Roundtables and Projects are posted and discussed on the hackED Platform.
We encourage students, professors, administrators, policy makers, and entrepreneurs to participate in hackED. We invite anyone who wants to express their opinion to sign up.
You can get involved by identifying challenges and brainstorming solutions at a hackED Roundtable on your campus and by joining conversations online. You and your peers can also apply for funding to pilot your idea on your campus through hackED Projects.
If you’re interested in leading hackED at the national scale, we are always accepting applications for volunteers who are also passionate about rethinking higher education! Reach out to us.
There are 1-3 campus lead(s) organizing hackED initiatives at our participating universities and colleges. They are passionate community builders who dedicate at least 2-5 hours a week to hackED. You can always reach out to your campus lead(s) to learn more about hackED, find out when the next Roundtable on your campus is, start a Project, and join existing project teams.
We’re currently recruiting campus leads across the country. Apply to lead hackED at your school here!
Yes, there can be more than one Project at the same school as long as the projects meet the specified requirements.
Others’ challenges and solutions should motivate and inspire you – this is collaborative problem solving. hackED operates with the value that collaboration best accelerates social progress in universities and colleges and beyond.
All challenges, solutions, and comments are useable by everyone – similar to open data, consider this open innovation. hackED operates with the value that in terms of social progress, collaboration is better than competition.
The information you provide to us at sign up will only be used by hackED and the RECODE network.
Established in 1937, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation is one of Canada’s oldest and largest philanthropic organizations. hackED is a project within the Foundation’s RECODE initiative – an effort to fuel social innovation education across Canada.
