Our ITMB students continue their winning streak, winning 1st prizes at the Tech Partnership Event
Our BSc IT Management for Business (ITMB) students continue their winning streak, winning two 1st prizes at the Tech Partnership South Event competition on 2nd March.
Pulling off an impressive ‘double’ winning in both the second and final year categories, our final year Information Technology Management for Business (ITMB) students won 1st place in the Final Year Competition with an idea (called ‘AURA’) which combines gamification and exposure therapy to help people conquer their phobias, anxiety and PTSD.
Our 1st year ITMB students won the Second Year Competition (which meant competing against year 2 students from other Universities) with their idea (called ‘Virchase’) on the application of Virtual Reality in retail to visualise products and order them from home.
This is the first winning of two 1st prizes in one of these competitions. Our current record holds our ITMB students winning 14 awards across six events.
“Fantastic”, “amazing”, “inspiring”, “so much energy and enthusiasm” – were some of the many reactions from students and employers alike in describing their experience of the March 2016 ITMB student/employer event, hosted by CA Technologies at picturesque Ditton Manor in Surrey.
More than 200 ITMB students from 10 universities spent the day networking, skills sharing, listening to business leaders and meeting the 70-plus representatives from top employers, including Air Products, Amazon Web Services, ASOS, Atos, Capgemini, Ford, GE, GSK, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, John Lewis Partnership, SAS, Shell and the Department for Work & Pensions.
CA Technologies’ Rebecca Taylor set the scene early in the day when she shared with the audience a recent European Commission prediction that by 2020, some 900,000 ICT roles across Europe are expected to be unfilled.
Many of the speakers took up this theme and explained to students what they, as employers, were looking for in a graduate recruit. Ruth Dunlop, head of new talent at DWP, said her organisation prized a combination of “creativity, curiosity, building rapport with others and the ability to communicate complex ideas simply.” ASOS Technology’s Gareth Waterhouse had a similar message: “Being a developer isn’t just about being good at development,” he noted, “It’s also about communication, collaboration and confirmation of understanding”.
Throughout the day, student teams competed in a Dragon’s Den-style challenge to pitch their app idea to panels of judges (employers). First year student teams, for example, were tasked with inventing an app on a dating, social networking or event theme – and their creative responses ranged from a platform for adventure sports lovers to connect, to an app for the ‘socially anxious’ who preferred to meet people with a shared intellectual interest.
Judges remarked on the overall high standard of entries and praised all competing teams for the confidence with which they presented, as well the commerciality of their thinking.
Our students thoroughly enjoyed the event, and are enjoying the new found ‘fame’ with employers knowing them by name! Other Universities are equally impressed with our students and were asking "how we do it?"
EECS’ Dr Antonios Kaniadakis, ITMB course director said “We are very proud of our students for their continuing success. What is more important than the wins, however, is that all ITMB and SEB students feel part of one single QMUL team, whether they participate in the competitions or not. It is this spirit of sharing and mutual support that is essential for their success. We do our best as academics to sustain such a healthy learning environment.”
Well done to all teams and many thanks to SEB and ITMB programme lecturers, Rachel Appleton, Eranjan Padumadasa and Claire Revell,Industrial Placement Manager for their fantastic support.
ITMB and SEB programmes are accredited Tech Industry Gold Degrees by the Tech Partnership (a growing network of employers creating the skills for the digital economy). Tech Industry Gold degrees are defined by employers to provide students with the most relevent technical, business and professional skills that place them in high demand in the tech sector.