How can our Computer Science students solve your business challenges?

How can our Computer Science students solve your business challenges?

Every year Computer Science students at the University of Bristol work in teams to tackle organisational challenges for charities, social enterprise, start-ups, public organisations, and multi-national brands.

We’re looking for organisations to submit their software projects ideas for two computer science units for our students to get their teeth into. Our students are empowered with technical skills that make them capable computer scientists who can deliver high quality projects.

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The value to organisations is clear. You get a team of experienced and dedicated Computer Scientists who bring their fresh ideas and cutting-edge learning to solve your problems. Meanwhile, our students get to experience the power of their work, and understand the real-world application and impact of everything they’ve learned, whilst ensuring their CV stands out from the crowd.

Previous student projects include:

• Development of a mobile app to enable a local food bank to streamline their processes.
• Patient management systems built for the NHS.
• A group of students working with Mozilla on new features for their Firefox browser which, if successful, will find its way onto thousands of devices around the world.

Our students have developed projects with international brands and government agencies such as Hewlett Packard, Aardman Animations, and the Environment Agency.

These projects are valuable additions to our students’ portfolios, and these high-profile and challenging projects provide great discussion points for job interviews!

Pragmatic Learning

The group projects are essential to the delivery of key Systems Engineering and Project Management material – we just can’t teach these topics from lectures and labs alone. The experience of working within diverse development teams and for real clients is something that cannot be simulated by in-class exercises. They have to be experienced and “lived” in a significant-scale outward-facing project.

This provides a “framework of reality” that allows students to contextualise everything else they learn from that point on – allowing them to critically reflect on how to practically employ theoretical course content in a real-world and pragmatic context. This contrasts with traditional computer science projects, which are typically isolated from end users. Students see first-hand the impact of their work which is a huge motivator.

Building Relationships

These group projects are an essential tool in maintaining the relationships between the University and local and national employers. They provide an essential channel of implicit feedback on the processes and technologies currently in use in industry. This is complimented by formal guest lectures provided by select project clients providing clear guidance to students on desired technical and transferable skills. In this way, we provide important employment opportunities for students, while maintaining a ‘recruitment pipeline’ between clients and the University.