Research

Sustainability of hackathon outcomes

My main contribution in this area is to identify means to support the sustainability of hackathon outcomes such as projects, learning gains, individual career advancements and networking. To do so, I study collegiate, corporate, entrepreneurial and scientific hackathons and develop methodological and analytical approaches to support organizers and participants to sustain outcomes after an event has ended. My future aim is to develop socio-technical means of integrating aspects of hackathons into existing practices related to (corporate) innovation, software development, entrepreneurship and the establishment and sustainability of communities.

Socio-technical collaboration support

In this area I have contributed to studies focusing on the effects of relationships between open source contributors and sustained participation, on collaboration in volunteer groups and I have developed a set of socio-technical heuristics which allow volunteers to quickly assess their current state of collaboration with the aim to identify and solve the most critical issues. These heuristics have subsequently been expanded to other organizational contexts. My future aim is to develop socio-technical means for individuals, teams, organizations and communities to quickly assess their current state of collaboration, identify issues and potentials for improvement and enact suitable change.

The following timeline illustrates my academic career. For more information please refer to my resume or contact me directly.

Career timeline

2018

Lecturer (Assistant Professor) – University of Tartu, Estonia

03/2018 – present

Lecturer for graduate and undergraduate courses on human-computer-interaction.
Researcher focusing on the sustainability of time-bounded intensive collaboration such as hackathons.

Adjunct Assistant Professor – Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

04/2018 – present

Researcher focusing on understanding and supporting hackathons as part of a project founded by the Sloan Foundation.

2017

Research associate – Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

05/2017 – 02/2018

Researcher focusing on understanding and supporting hackathons as part of a project founded by the Sloan Foundation.

Postdoctoral fellow – University of Pittsburgh, USA

04/2017 – 02/2018

Researcher focusing on the development and evaluation of socio-technical approaches to support sustained collaboration over time in mixed collocated and distributed settings (supported by a funding grant from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German federal funding agency)).

Adjunct faculty – University of Pittsburgh, USA

01/2017 – 04/2017

Lecturer for an undergraduate course on Information Systems Development.

2016

Visiting research fellow – University of Pittsburgh, USA

08/2016 – 04/2017

Researcher focusing on the development and evaluation of socio-technical approaches to support sustained collaboration over time in mixed collocated and distributed settings
Co-author of research proposals for Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German national federal agency) and local funding bodies in Pittsburgh including two successful proposals for individual funding and for the project We are strong! Leveraging Information Technology to Empower Marginalized Communities.

Temporary research programmer – Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

09/2016 – 01/2017

Front-end developer for an extension to the web based e-learning platform LASAD to support students to learn the english grammar.

Online tutor – EURO-FH University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany

06/2016 – 04/2017

Online tutor for graduate courses on Information Management and Business Engineering.

2015

Postdoctoral research fellow – Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

01/2015 – 02/2017

Senior researcher in the German funded project 4C4Learn on intertwining process and competence management approaches to support organizational development.
Co-author of multiple research proposals including a successful proposal for the project 4C4Learn.

2013

Visiting research fellow – Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

02/2013 – 05/2013

Researcher focusing on behavioral intentions of process model re-use.

2011

Process management consultant and coach

06/2011 – present

Consultant and coach for multiple public and private organizations such as:

School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri
VIACTIV (health insurance provider)
Heinrich Huhn GmbH & Co. KG (manufacturer of metal stampings and assemblies)
Construction, IT-services, human resources and finances departments at the Ruhr-University Bochum
Kassenärztliche Vereinigung Westfalen-Lippe (association of doctors)

2009

Researcher and PhD student – Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

03/2009 – 12/2014

Researcher in the European funded project MIRROR (IP-FP7) focusing on the evaluation of a socio-technical approach to foster collaborative reflection at the work place.
Researcher in the German funded project VEIN focusing on the design and evaluation of a socio-technical approach to support continuous improvement of work practice at the shop floor.
Research assistant in the German funded project service4home focusing on the design and evaluation of service processes to support elderly people to live in their own home for as long as possible.
Research assistant in the project ISMS focusing on a privacy oriented analysis of work processes in a university administration.

2008

Co-founder and front-end developer – RWTH Aachen University / fromatob.com, Germany

06/2008 – 09/2009

Co-founder and front-end developer for an online travel platform in cooperation with RWTH Aachen University (fromatob.com).

2004

Student assistant and developer – Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

04/2004 – 02/2009

Lecture assistant for courses on Socio-technical Systems Design.
JAVA developer for a graphical process-modeling tool.
System administrator for the Linux server infrastructure of the Department Information and Technology Management.

2001

Student assistant and developer – Technical University Dortmund, Germany

10/2001 – 03/2004

Lecture assistant for courses on Computers and Society.
JAVA developer for a graphical process-modeling tool.

Publications

For a complete list of my publications please refer to my Google Scholar profile.

Journals

Nolte, A., Hayden, L.B. & Herbsleb, J.D. (2020). How to Support Newcomers in Scientific Hackathons - An Action Research Study on Expert Mentoring. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 4, CSCW1, Article 25 (May 2020), 23 pages. (PDF)
Pe-Than, E.P.P., Nolte, A., Filippova, A., Bird, C., Scallen, S. & Herbsleb, J.D. (2020). Corporate Hackathons, How and Why? A multiple case study of motivation, project proposal and selection, goal setting, coordination, and project continuation. Human-Computer Interaction.
Pe-Than, E.P.P., Nolte, A., Filippova, A., Bird, C., Scallen, S. & Herbsleb, J.D. (2019). Designing Corporate Hackathons With a Purpose. IEEE Software 36, 1, 15-22. (PDF)
Nolte, A., Pe-Than, E.P.P., Filippova, A., Bird, C., Scallen, S. & Herbsleb, J.D. (2018). You Hacked and Now What? - Exploring Outcomes of a Corporate Hackathon. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW, 129:1-129:23. (PDF, Slides)
Chounta, I.A., Nolte, A., Hecking, T., Farzan, R., & Herrmann, T. (2017). When to Say “Enough is Enough!”: A Study on the Evolution of Collaboratively Created Process Models. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 1, CSCW, 33:1-33:21. (PDF)
Nolte, A., Bernhard, E., Recker, J., Pittke, F., & Mendling, J. (2016). Repeated Use of Process Models: The Impact of Artifact, Technological and Individual Factors. Decision Support Systems, 88, 98–111. (PDF)

Conferences

Qiu, H.S., Nolte, A., Brown, A., Serebrenik, A., Vasilescu, B. (2019). Going Farther Together: The Impact of Social Capital on Sustained Participation in Open Source. In: ICSE '19: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering. (PDF, ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award)
Nolte, A., & Farzan, R. (2019). Identifying Socio-Technical Means to Support Small Loosely Coupled Groups of Volunteers. In: International Conference on Collaboration and Technology (pp. 17-35). Springer. (PDF, Slides)
Affia, A.O., Nolte, A., & Matulevičius, M. (2019) Security Risk Management in Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems: A Systematic Literature Review. In: On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2019 Conferences (pp. 282-300). Springer. (PDF)
Medina Angarita, M. A., & Nolte, A. (2019). Does it matter why we hack? - Exploring the impact of goal alignment in hackathons. In: Proceedings of 17th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. (PDF)
Sirgmets, M., Milani, F., Nolte, A., & Pungas, T. (2018). Designing Process Diagrams – A Framework for Making Design Choices When Visualizing Process Mining Outputs. In: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems. Springer. (PDF)
Herrmann, T., Nolte, A., & Prilla, M. (2016). Socio-technical Process Design — The Case of Coordinated Service Delivery for Elderly People. In: Blurring the Boundaries Through Digital Innovation (pp. 217-229). Springer. (PDF, Special award Sandro D’Atri)

Workshops

Nolte, A. (2019). Touched by the Hackathon: A Study on the Connection between Hackathon Participants and Start-Up Founders. In: International Workshop on Software-intensive Business 2019: Start-ups, Ecosystems and Platforms (IWSiB 2019) (pp. 31-36). ACM.(PDF, Slides)
Pe-Than, E.P.P., Nolte, A. (2019). The 2nd Workshop on Hacking and Making at Time-Bounded Events - Technical report. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.02710. (PDF)

Teaching

Undergraduate

LTAT.05.007 Human Computer Interaction – Lecturer
University of Tartu (Spring 2020, Syllabus, Lecture videos)

LTAT.05.007 Human Computer Interaction – Lecturer
University of Tartu (Spring 2019, Syllabus, Lecture videos and slides)

INFSCI 1017 Implementation of Information Systems – Lecturer
University of Pittsburgh (Spring 2017, Syllabus)

Project Management – Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2016)

Project Management – Co-Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2015)

Software Engineering – Co-Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2015)

Project Management – Co-Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2015)

Graduate

LTAT.05.007 Human Computer Interaction – Lecturer
University of Tartu (Autumn 2019, Syllabus)

LTAT.05.007 Human Computer Interaction – Lecturer
University of Tartu (Autumn 2018, Syllabus)

Information Management – Online Tutor
EURO-FH University of Applied Sciences Hamburg (Winter 2016)

Business Engineering – Online Tutor
EURO-FH University of Applied Sciences Hamburg (Winter 2016)

Process Management and Innovation – Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2016)

Project Management – Co-Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2015)

Process Management and Innovation – Co-Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2015)

Subject-driven role-guided externalization of organizational models – Co-Lecturer
JKU Linz (ERASMUS Summer School 2014, Sample slides on process modeling fundamentals)

Process Management and Innovation – Co-Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2014)

Subject-driven role-guided externalization of organizational models – Co-Lecturer
JKU Linz (ERASMUS Summer School 2013)