Hear from our students about online learning and internships during the pandemic.

Over the summer term our students took part in the innovative lab on Designing for Real People (DRP), as part of our second-year MEng and BEng Computing courses.

In this lab students learn about Agile engineering and Human Centred Design (HCD) in small teams. The course is run in the Department of Computing by Dr Mark Wheelhouse in conjunction with Carolyn Runcie and the Service Design team from The Royal College of Art (RCA).

Our DRP lab is an opportunity to apply industry-standard practice with real stakeholders, on real-world projects. What a challenge! Here is what our students had to say about the course and online learning:

As you can see, the department is very well-prepared for online learning and teaching.

Eight tutors and two hundred students split across fifty groups took part in the course. This was one of the first fully-online labs in the College and the lockdown presented some unique experiences. As the pandemic scattered the participants all over the world, our instructors and students adjusted to online learning in a matter of days. Across every time-zone of the globe, we delivered lectures using Panopto, led student and tutor interaction on Piazza and held interactive tutorials using Microsoft Teams. Students met with their real stakeholders for the first time on this project, and got to work.

DRP is one of the many stimulating and rewarding labs we run. The instructors delivered the intended learning outcomes of the course and many of the apps are ready to be deployed into production. Full Interviews and project demonstrations will be uploaded to our YouTube channel.

DRP is also one of the reasons Imperial Computing graduates regularly rank top in the UK for starting salary and employability. The lab also prepares students for their summer internships with our industry partners including ARM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, American Express, Netcraft and many others. Some lucky participants will work with world-leading researchers and teachers at Imperial College on UROP and StudentShaper projects. Our students are excited to tell you more about their summer plans:

If you or your organisation wants to be involved in DRP please contact Dr Mark Wheelhouse. We are always looking for industrial partners, human-centred problems for projects, and speakers willing to showcase an exciting technology stack.