Innovation challenges are gaining traction in higher education because they blend competence-based learning, entrepreneurial mindset, and experiential learning at the same time. This can be widened to cross-institutional collaboration if more than one institution is involved in delivering the event, and to interdisciplinary collaboration if students from different fields of study join in. These elements are most effective when combined into a fast-paced, genuinely engaging experience.
Innovation challenges are rooted in connecting people with real challenges that real stakeholders face, in an experiential way. This method relies on experiential learning theory through experience and reflection, as well as the ability to implement theoretical learning soon after acquiring it. This learning style reflects Kolb’s (1984) Experiential Learning Theory with its four-stage Experiential Learning Cycle, which weaves a thread between concrete experience and abstract conceptualism, active experimentation and reflective observation. Depending on the type of innovation challenge, these four stages will happen to different degrees within a condensed timeframe.
Participants of an innovation challenge should be constantly evaluating what they are learning about the needs of future users and adjusting their solution accordingly. In this way, they learn to interact with people on new subjects, figuring out what this means for the solution they are working on and iterating their work. Most experts agree that when employing experiential learning, interactive learning, or learning by doing, positive outcomes for learners result (Smart & Csapo 2007). When the students take an active role in the learning process, it optimises their learning.
The ability to take on a real challenge and pull a team together to solve it is a 21st century skill that both entrepreneurs and employers need. Being able to blend research, a process, and action will be a real asset to participants in their working lives ahead. Challenge-based learning (CBL) has accumulated a growing evidence base from early conference papers such as Giorgio and Brophy’s (2001) work in biomedical engineering, where they refer to it as ‘challenge-based instruction’, to more recent literature reviews by Leijon et al. (2021) and Gallagher & Savage (2020), both with a higher education focus. One way to define CBL is:
A learning experience in which learning takes place through the identification, analysis and design of a solution to a socio-technical problem. The learning experience is typically multidisciplinary, takes place in an international context and aims to find collaboratively developed solutions that are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable.
Malmqvist et al. (2015)
Despite this growing body of literature, there remains a gap between the theory of CBL and the practice of running an innovation challenge in a higher education setting. After having run around 20 different innovation challenges over the past decade, across multiple institutions, I have learned a great deal about what determines whether these events succeed; not just logistically, but also pedagogically.
The central argument of this article is that the most consequential decisions in an innovation challenge are made before the first participant registers. Two of the clearest expressions of this are who shows up, and what they actually learn.
Design as the determining phase
It is tempting to think of an innovation challenge as an event; something that happens on a particular day or set of days, defined by its energy and activity. But an innovation challenge is better understood as a design artefact. The experience that participants have is almost entirely a function of choices made weeks or months before they walk through the door. The event itself is the output of a much longer design process.
Organisations that focus their effort on the operational layer – the agenda, the catering, the venue set-up – while leaving foundational design decisions too late or to chance, often find themselves with events that are well-run but poorly attended, or well-attended but poorly aligned with their learning goals. The design phase is where the real work happens. Assuming the event will succeed just because the theme or prizes are appealing overlooks participants’ basic needs – such as fair rules and good food – and undermines their ability to engage fully.
These early design decisions are interconnected in ways that are not always obvious. The choice of a name and theme shapes who applies or feels included. The team formation logic shapes the diversity of each team. The decision about credits or prizes shapes what participants optimise for and the type of work they do before, during and after the event. The modality shapes the quality of team cohesion. None of these are neutral logistical choices; each is a pedagogical decision with downstream consequences (Spokes 2021a, 2021b, 2022a, 2022b).
An event that is entirely extra-curricular will have less teaching included in it and can therefore be somewhat shorter. Designing the agenda for this kind of event can be geared towards moving the process along with little guidance. For example, the November 2025 U!REKA Urban Circular Hackathon held in Metropolia UAS had very little teaching involved as it was a completely extra-curricular event that had two pre-event online meetings and then a 2-day in-person event where participants heard experts speak but did not have any ‘lessons’.
On the contrary, the 2025 U!REKA Change Agents 5 ECTS course (Spokes 2025) consisted of three online meetings of two hours with lessons and expert lectures. Then roughly 30 students from around Europe from our U!REKA partner institutions arrived in Helsinki for the in-person week, which was the innovation challenge portion of the course. The teams had lessons, a field trip and plenty of team working time. These event days needed different kinds of learning design and pedagogical knowledge. This same focus on education can be seen in the 10 Days 100 Challenges course that has been run since 2018 (Spokes 2022c).
Design and inclusion – who feels invited?
One of the most immediate consequences of early design choices is the composition of the participant group. In higher education innovation challenges, there is often an aspiration of interdisciplinary teams that bring together students from as many of the taught subjects that the institution offers. The reality is frequently more homogeneous, not because students from other disciplines were explicitly excluded but they were never reached, or they self-selected out before applying.
Language is the most powerful filter, but we are not talking about English vs other languages, although these are also part of the design decisions. The word ‘hackathon’ carries with it a strong association with technical, software-oriented work, an image reinforced over years of media coverage of technology events and their connection to Silicon Valley or similar places. Students who do not identify themselves as technical will often read only ‘hackathon’ and conclude that the event is not for them, without reading another line of the marketing material. Choosing instead to call an event an ‘innovation challenge’ is not simply a naming preference; it is an inclusive design decision. It signals that what is valued is problem-solving and collaboration, not a specific technical background.
This self-selection phenomenon extends beyond naming. Channel selection for marketing determines which student communities are even aware of the event. An event promoted exclusively through engineering faculty newsletters will attract engineering students, regardless of how inclusive the event description is. Reaching a genuinely diverse group of participants requires going to where different students are both physically and digitally. Marketing efforts require the help of programme coordinators, student unions, student services, and discipline-specific channels.
Another way to support interdisciplinarity is how the teams are formed. This is another design lever with inclusion implications. Allowing students to register as pre-formed teams tends to reproduce existing social networks, which can be rather homogeneous. Requiring individual registration and then constructing interdisciplinary teams is more work for organisers, but it produces more diverse team compositions, and removes the barrier of needing to already know enough people to form a team, which disproportionately affects newer or less socially embedded students.
Team vs individual registration can also be combined to allow participants to join individually and in teams. Some people would not join alone, but some people do not have enough adventurous friends. So, to make the event as broadly accessible as possible, you can allow both teams and individuals to join.
This is not to suggest that inclusion is simply a marketing problem. It is worth considering what the event itself signals about belonging. Are you considering different angles of speakers in reference to the theme? Are the examples and challenges used in keynotes drawn from a range of fields? Are the themes relatable to all people? Are coaches drawn from diverse professional backgrounds with different sets of skills? Does the event physically feel like a space for everyone? These are all design questions.
Design and pedagogy – the learning vs competition tension
The second major consequence of early design decisions is what participants actually learn, or more precisely, what they optimise for. This is where the tension between learning and competition becomes most visible, and where the design choices made in the preparation phase have the deepest pedagogical implications.
The decision about whether to award credits, monetary prizes, or both is often treated as an administrative matter. This is seen as a question of what funding is available or what institutional rules permit. In practice, it is one of the most significant pedagogical decisions in the design of an innovation challenge. Credits and money create different motivational structures, and they shape how participants engage with the event.
When credits are the primary recognition mechanism, learning becomes the explicit goal. This requires a more structured pedagogical agenda during the event. Teaching sessions on prototyping, user research, and pitching are not interruptions to the event; they are the event. Participants are expected to demonstrate learning, often through an end project portfolio reflecting on their process, their team dynamics, and the development of their solution. The pitch at the end is a learning artefact as much as a competitive moment.
When monetary prizes are the primary recognition mechanism, the dynamic shifts. The competition becomes more prominent, and the intrinsic motivation to win reduces the need for extensive in-event teaching. Participants who are genuinely competing for a prize tend to self-direct their learning; they will figure out what they need to know to build the best solution they can. This is not without pedagogical value, as self-directed problem-solving under pressure is itself a 21st century skill. But it is a different kind of learning, and it benefits from a different kind of event design.
The agenda itself is a design decision with significant learning implications. One of the most consistent lessons from practice is that teams need unscheduled time to develop their concepts. Over-programming the event with speakers, workshops, and check-ins can prevent teams from reaching the deeper stages of their process. This shows up in the iterations that come after the first idea, the pivot that emerges from a conversation with a potential user, the prototype that reveals a flaw in the original assumption. Protecting this time in the design of the agenda is a pedagogical act. Participants who are not given enough unstructured team working time will not develop the idea beyond the first few thoughts the team had. This team time is also needed for the conversations between the team members themselves to make sure everyone feels heard and part of the solution.
One thing that we have found at Metropolia UAS is that often students do not want to gain credits for these events. The way UAS credits are allocated in Finland means that students have a maximum number of credits they can earn which means that they do not have ‘space’ in their study plans to accommodate these extra credits. It is a good idea to keep these types of issues in mind when making credit vs prize considerations.
One of the experiences we had when planning the 2025 U!REKA Urban Circular Hack was the vacillation between credits and no credits for those outside the core planning team. Just this one design decision has many knock-on effects.
Pitch time limits are another small but telling design decision. Holding to a strict three-minute limit is not simply a matter of fairness; it not only teaches participants that meeting requirements and respecting schedules are non-negotiable professional norms, but also to make concise arguments with all the important information. Allowing pitches to run long sends the wrong message, and it also shows that not all teams are held to equal standards. The design of the pitch format, including how judges are briefed and what scoring criteria they use, reflects what the event values and communicates this to participants.
Implications for practice
To sum up, there is not one correct way to design an innovation challenge. The appropriate design depends on the institutional context, the available resources, the nature of the partner organisations involved, and what the event is ultimately for.
The argument is rather that these design decisions should be made consciously and early, with an understanding of their downstream effects. An institution that wants to attract a diverse interdisciplinary cohort needs to make design decisions that support that goal from the very first conversation about the event name. An institution that wants to use an innovation challenge as a vehicle for deep experiential learning needs to build that intention into the agenda structure, the credit framework, and the brief given to coaches and judges.
Equally, institutions should be realistic about what their event is optimising for. An innovation challenge designed primarily to generate publicity or attract industry partnerships is not necessarily a lesser event, but its design logic is different from one designed primarily as a pedagogical experience. The most unsuccessful events tend to be those that have not resolved these tensions in the design phase and attempt to be everything at once, just confusing the participants.
Sometimes as the designer and organiser of these events you must protect the time of your participants because the different stakeholders see different visions. In the end, the experience of your participants is what needs to be foremost in your mind.
The body of knowledge grows with us
Every innovation challenge described in this article started with someone who wanted to create something interesting and educational for participants. Even when education is not the central focus of these events, learning always takes place. The accumulated experience of running these events – across institutions, disciplines, and different incentive structures – represents a substantial body of practical knowledge that is under-valued and under-documented in higher education literature.
The theory of challenge-based learning is well-established. What is less well-documented is the practical design intelligence required to translate that theory into events that are inclusive, pedagogically coherent, and genuinely rewarding for participants. Students will ask questions that organisers have never considered. Challenges will arise that no blueprint can anticipate. Each event teaches those who run it something new. Sharing that learning, through articles, professional networks, and honest reflection on what worked and what did not, is how the field advances.
The hope is that higher education becomes more varied and accessible each year. Challenge-based learning is one of the ways it can continue to change. The design decisions that make that possible are not made on the day. They are made long before the doors open.
References
Gallagher, S. E., & Savage, T. 2023. Challenge-based learning in higher education: An exploratory literature review. Teaching in Higher Education, 28(6), 1135–1157. Accessed 30 March 2026.
Giorgio, T., & Brophy, S. P. 2001. Challenge based learning in biomedical engineering: A legacy cycle for biotechnology Paper presented at 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition 24 June 2001. Albuquerque: USA. Accessed 30 March 2026.
Kolb, D.A. 1984. Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Smart, K.L. & Csapo, N. 2007. Learning by doing: Engaging students through learner-centered activities, Business Communication Quarterly, 70(4), 451–457.
Leijon, M., Gudmundsson, P., Staaf, P., & Christersson, C. 2022. Challenge based learning in higher education – A systematic literature review. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 59(5), 609–618. Accessed 28 March 2026.
Malmqvist, J., Rådberg, K.K., Lundqvist, U. 2015. Comparative analysis of challenge-based learning experiences at three European universities. Paper presented at the 11th International CDIO Conference 8 June 2015. Chengdu: China. Accessed 28 March 2026.
Spokes, P. 2021a. Innovation events to facilitate teaching, learning, and shifting mindsets. Tikissä blog of Metropolia UAS 14 December 2021. Helsinki: Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Accessed 2 April 2026.
Spokes, P. 2021b. Innovation events in three parts: Service jams. Tikissä blog of Metropolia UAS 30 December 2021. Helsinki: Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Accessed 2 April 2026.
Spokes, P. 2022a. Innovation events in three parts: Hackathons. Tikissä blog of Metropolia UAS 18 January 2022. Helsinki: Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Accessed 2 April 2026.
Spokes, P. 2022b. Innovation events in three parts: Design sprints. Tikissä blog of Metropolia UAS 25 January 2022. Helsinki: Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Accessed 2 April 2026.
Spokes, P. 2022c. Learning to innovate every day – 10 days 100 challenges event. Tikissä blog of Metropolia UAS 28 September 2022. Helsinki: Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Accessed 4 April 2026.
Spokes, P. 2025. Students with a vision for climate-smart cities: Co-creating the future in U!REKA. Published 24 June 2025. Metrospective Pop. Accessed 4 April 2026.
Author
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Pamela Spokes
Specialist, Metropolia UASPamela Spokes BA, MA, MBA, AmO. Educator in Service Design and Entrepreneurship with the Turbiini Pre-Incubator Programme in English.
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