Computing Students at SERC Show They Have the IT Factor

Despite the difficulties of the last year, SERC’s computing students have displayed continued creativity, cooperation and an incredible work ethic, demonstrated clearly through Project Based Learning Activities and student enterprises.

The “FixIT” group teamed HND Computing and Ulster University Foundation Degree Computing students on several projects and activities, including preparation of IT equipment for loan during lockdown so that staff and students could continue working from home. The team also worked in partnership with Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council’s “Connecting You” initiative which saw them prepare tablets for use in the community and provide follow-up support.

Abbie King (20 from Bangor), a Foundation Degree student involved in FixIT said, “The project has been invaluable. As a group we have gained experience in a working environment and it's given me an insight into how the College works from an IT perspective.  It has been great to give something back to the College community during COVID-19.

“FixIT has become a tight-knit team very quickly as we have been working on jobs and projects together, and as a team had  to figure out the solutions to problems.”

Abbie concluded, “Being involved in the project has vastly improved my communication skills - I've had to put myself out of my comfort zone and talk to people about IT and the problems they face, and then go and fix this problem for them. I believe FixIT has been invaluable for building the skills and experience that I will need in the work-place and in my future.”

Following their successful academic year Abbie, along with a number of her FixIT colleagues, is working in the college’s IT department on a summer internship.

“Project Space”, a student company established this year, allowed a number of second year Foundation Degree students to complete their work-based learning module and included the creation of three new apps and an infrastructure project where students designed and prototyped a full network infrastructure plan for a proposed eSERC campus.

‘Marketplace’ was created to allow student companies to sell their products online - these would have been traditionally sold at the College’s very popular seasonal fairs. SERC’s Horticulture team were able to use it for their annual plant sale.

The ‘College Kitchen’ app allowed the ordering of food from the College kitchen outlets. This project is still ongoing, and next year’s class will pick it up and develop it further.

An ‘Animal Management’ app was created to help with the maintenance and upkeep of the animals within the Applied Science department in college including keeping record of feeding times and wellbeing of the animals.

Student Tyler Stewart (20 from Millisle) spoke about the creation of the app.

“Working with three others , I created the Marketplace app. It presented us with plenty of challenges in that we had to fix a number of errors and problems such as buttons not doing what we wanted or some pages not working properly. These issues could take hours to fix, but by the end of the placement we had everything working properly. The Horticulture team were very happy with how it turned out and they were able to get all of their plants sold through the app - a bit like click and collect. It was easier for them to organise sales in this way rather than doing it manually through excel spreadsheets which they had used in the past. “ 

Tyler added, “It’s been very valuable, it gave me a good idea of what it's like to create a proper web store. We had weekly meetings with suggestions on how to improve the site by developing new features and functionality and I now have a better understanding of what to look out for if I get certain error types so I am better equipped to deal with those issues when creating sites in the future.”

Paula Kirkwood, Lecturer in Computing, said “These projects gave students the opportunity to put into practice what they have learnt in the lectures, from requirements gathering, analysis and design through to the implementation and testing phase. Being able to apply these studies to real life projects is an excellent example of Project-based Learning.”

Paula concluded, “The dedication and motivation demonstrated by students involved has been truly inspiring given that this has been such a challenging year, and those involved need to be commended for all their efforts in making Project Space and FixIT such a success.”

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