Jisc: Summer of Student Innovation showcase

JISC Summer of Student Innovation competition was a co-design competition which looked for ideas from students in response to the question, how digital technologies could enhance students’ learning experience in universities and colleges. The 21 winners were announced in June and received funding to develop their ideas and presents them at this showcase event at Imperial College in London on 12th November 2013.

Student projects developed a video pitch and, through JISC’s Elevator site, these were voted on by students and staff from institutions across the UK. This process meant students were not just identifying opportunities but the potential solutions were being voted on as being an answer to the needs of the wider student body. Two key themes were evident.

• Assessment, feedback and time management. Several projects aimed to help students manage their workload through time management, creating student centred collaborative spaces and strategically identifying areas for improvement in order to achieve the grades they wanted.
• Peer review. Projects to identify co-collaborators, either for mutual benefit such as sharing notes and having discussions, and to develop areas for research funding, supervisors or co-researchers.

Projects presented by the teams were, overall, more proof-of-concept than turn-key solutions. The real value in the work was that they had, through a process of collaboration and co-creation, identified key areas for student engagement, and provided a pointer to some of the issues faced by educational institutions.

For more information on the Summer of Student Innovation, follow this link.