The Problem

Many students acquire good programming skills at university and are exposed to an array of relevant technologies. However, they often struggle to demonstrate their readiness to work within industry. For example, they may lack:

• knowledge of development infrastructure, especially in terms of deployment.

• an understanding of the realities of working with real clients.

• experience of working collaboratively on a large code base and delivering in sprints.

While a final year capstone project can address some of these challenges, there is a strong justification to provide students with "internship-style" opportunities alongside their studies. Could a vibrant virtual software house run by staff and mentored by alumni from industry, attract real clients with real problems that students could be recruited to implement?

Who are the principal stakeholders of this project?

• Students

• Alumni

• Graduates

• Lecturers

• Careers and Employability Team

What are principal aims of this problem book?

• To pilot a 12 – 16-week programme, that provides students with opportunities for authentic and experiential learning, through live team-based projects.

• To include problem-centred activities that incorporate client requirements (e.g., time, quality and cost and considerations).

• To provide opportunities for students to develop ownership experience, improved confidence, communication, and networking skills.

What are the indicative objectives of this project?

• Create a specification of a modern development environment including IDEs and repositories, deployment pathways e.g., AWS, programming languages and frameworks, code ownership and working practices.

• Identify project resources, including computer laboratories including access times, appropriate academic staff, software tools.

• Secure the advice and involvement of professional practitioners and employability teams.

• Recruit students to developer, lead and mentor positions within the virtual software house and assign these students to small project teams.

• Define a learning programme covering required technologies, work practices, and the culture to which team participants are expected to contribute.

• Evaluate the scalability of the programme and scope of authenticity.

What are the anticipated outputs and outcomes of this project?

• Project artefacts that can be shared as exemplars.

• An exemplar blueprint for repeating the programme.