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Transcript for Presenting to Industry Panellists with Rupak
Kharel and Ciaron Murphy
RK: “I'm Rupak Kharel. I teach on BSc. Computer Network Technology and BEng. course as well as
MSc. course.”
CM: “My name is Ciaron Murphy and I teach on the Computer and Network Technologies course as
well as the BEng Electrical Engineering course.
The activity we had was the students presenting a sales pitch to the clients Alstom about the
projects they have just completed.”
RK: “Alstom wanted one alternative for implementing a spot meter which was low price and they
can just plug and play into their factory set up. They provided the user specification and our students
worked in groups, did a proper project management, then finally delivered the product to them.”
CM: “We invited the clients Alstom to the presentations for a couple a reasons. The first one was
really to showcase our students, showcase what they can do. I suppose the second really was to
actually motivate the students because if we said it was just the staff doing the presentations maybe
the way they went about it would be slightly different. I've seen in the past before where we have
had staff presentations only and students have been quite casual about it and after experiencing of
the first presentations where the students encountered the people from Alstom, one of the
comments was maybe that they were a bit too casual in a business sense. And when we had the
second presentations, the sales pitch, it was evidence that they had taken it much more seriously.”
RK: “We wanted to added industrial relevance to the units that we are teaching that can add
employability opportunities to our students so we moved onto this live project concepts where
students work alongside with companies to deliver a solution that is actually doing to be
implemented in the context the industry.
What we wanted to introduce in this unit was to give the student the flavour what is out there when
they go onto to a job or set up their own business. One thing that everyone of us understands it that
the requires keep on changing so we wanted to give that aspect on learning and then evolving with
time so that they can accommodate any changes that are required. That is why we did the
intermediate presentation where they presented what they understood about the user specification
and their proposed solution. When they got the feedback from the client from which they added
new features or removed some of the existing solutions and they had to maybe change the direction
of the project in some way. So it was adding real life thoughts to the unit.”
CM: “The sales pitch formed part of the second course work. It was equal to 10% of the total mark.
The way it was assessed - we actually had the people from Alstom, we actually gave them a marking
grid to basically get a broad spectrum of what they thought of the presentations. With regard to
feedback, what happens the lecturers would give feedback and they also give feedback from Alstom.
We put the feedback up on Moodle so they can see their actual comments. Something that is quite
interesting is that they come in and ask 'why have they said this? why have they said that?' and you
know, it is not just the lecturers being picky over certain things so it is quite interesting. I think they
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get a lot from it and our client as well, they were keen. They actually wanted to see the students
reports.”
RK: “We think that including the live project element in our unit has been a success and our students
have enjoyed it, we have enjoyed it and the partner company Alstom were very happy with the final
outputs. So if somebody wants to include live project element in their unit then the first thing will be
to look out for companies that are willing to provide a project, maybe not just one but multiple sets
of problems that the student can go and work in groups and then encouraging. But the key thing will
be to align the learning outcome of the unit following the university rules and regulations and then
aligning the user specification that they company provide.”
CM: “I think it is also important as well to keep the company involved and up to date about what is
going on. Invite then to any sort of activity, they like to feel involved. I think also as well, when you
get the project specification from them just think about how you are going to do it. I know for the
one that we have just done, when I first got that I basically worked out how I would do it so work out
any potential pitfalls.”
Alstom Representatives: “With this, from an Alstom perspective this is something we are trying to
build on. This is our first project. One of the main advantages with maybe looking at the
collaborations from a project point of view is for our own graduate intake. Over the last few years
we have been increasing the number of graduates we take and there is a demographic in
engineering, there is a skills gap, and so what we are trying to do with the working relationship is
actually meet the students rather than just at an interview stage, that we meet them over the
course of an actual project so we can benefit them from looking at them it is a long term interview if
you like.”
“From my point of view, I have been working very closely with them. It has been very collaborative
and it has been a very good experience for the students and also for us.”