The competition was devised by Jisc, RLUK, RUGIT, SCONUL and UCISA as part of a new co-design approach to innovation within UK education. Improving the student experience is widely recognised as one of the most important strategic drivers for universities and colleges. We strongly believe that students should have a prime role in developing novel ways to improve their learning experience. So the inspiration for the competition was to give students the chance to develop ideas to do just that. Students from universities and colleges were invited to produce a video pitch to market their idea to their peers (for votes) and a jury of professionals in the field.
We were delighted with the response. 36 ideas were submitted with 33 hitting the threshold of 150 votes from at least three institutions. The standard of the ideas was very high, especially in terms of the video presentations, despite the very short timescale for submission. If we were feeling particularly mischievous we would point out that the video standard was much higher than when we ran a similar pilot that was open to university staff. This high standard made whittling the list of 33 down to our target of 20 ideas very difficult. In the end we could only whittle it down as far as 21. So here are our final 21:
Call for Participants
Matthew Terrell, University of Nottingham
Allowing academics to manage and simplify the recruitment of participants for research
Crowdsource skills from the students around you
Caroline Nguyen, Undergraduate at University of Edinburgh
An online platform for students with non-academic projects to connect with other students that can help them get it done
FundFind
Emanuil Tolev, Undergraduate at Aberystwyth University
A website which allows funders and Unis to post funding opportunities and allows you to find them + more!
GoNCode
Andrew Isherwood, Undergraduate at University of Salford
Developing applications through the aid of graphical representation of your code as you progress
Konnect - The smart lecture experience
Adam Plowman, Undergraduate at University College London
A website and smartphone app will allow for much greater student engagement during lectures
Later - choose which emails you want to receive
Edmund Gentle, Undergraduate at Plymouth University
Allows individuals to be able to choose what types of emails they receive and how often using a simple web application
ManageMe - Multiplatform App For Time Management In College / University
Richard Francis, Undergraduate Bucks New University
A revolution in how students manage commitments to enable efficient socialising
NoteDump
Joel Murphy, Undergraduate at Cardiff University
An application that helps you to annotate, organise, share, and discuss University notes with friends
Profectus - The electronic individual learning plan for learners with Special Educational Needs
Chris Medwell, Taught Postgraduate at University Centre Doncaster
A mobile eILP/Target Tracker designed for SEN. Creating an inclusive and accessible learner voice
Progress
Connor Atherton, Undergraduate at Lancaster University
Web software that allows students to forecast their marks and view there progress throughout the year
SciFund - Helping academics and students achieve their research goals
Robert Chokr, Taught Postgraduate at University of Bath
Crowdsourcing platform for academic research that helps academics and students achieve their research
ShareSci - The Public Engagement Network!
Alex Gibberd, Research Postgraduate at University College London
A scientific network to promote collaboration on public engagement projects, initially focussed in London
Sigma - A new online learning system
Alex Best, Undergraduate at University of Warwick
A new intelligent online learning system for Maths, Computer Science and related subjects.
Study Buddy - the planned procrastination tool
Elaine Bateman, Undergraduate at Open University
Keeps track of your available study time, adjusts your study schedule to compensate whilst allowing breaks for morale
TeachBack
Thomas Lim, Undergraduate at Imperial College London
A platform to collate personal feedback on teaching assistants, which is crucial for a complete learning experience
The Acorn Project
Laurence Belcher, Undergraduate at University of Exeter
A cost-effective, open source device to monitor the natural environment and to facilitate data sharing
The Classnet
Kieran Wright, Student at Barking and Dagenham College
A website like a forum or social network that improves communication between students studying related subject areas
TheStudentVLE.com
James Yorke, Undergraduate at University of Greenwich
An external VLE created by (and for) students to allow the sharing of resources and to inspire national peer learning
Uni-board
Matt Beveridge, Undergraduate at University of Birmingham
An online noticeboard for university students.
Unisocs - Push your degree to the next level!
Joseph Chamberlain, Undergraduate at University of Liverpool
A website for students to receive help and advice from other members of their subject department
WikiNets
William Zeng Research Postgraduate at Oxford University
A collaborative, open source, network building tool to share and organize notes and research
All the ideas that were submitted can be seen on the summer of student innovation competition website.
We would like to congratulate all students who took part. Their ideas were great, and if we could have supported them all we would. We are sure that the students who didn’t get funding will still go on to great success. We wish them the best of luck and we’d love to hear from them again in future competitions.
The successful winners will now work on developing their ideas over the summer. In the autumn we will be organising an event to showcase the technology that the students have developed and encouraging universities and colleges to trial and adopt their innovations. We’ll publish more details about that event soon.
It promises to be a very interesting and inspiring summer.
Co-written with Andrew McGregor, Programme manager, Jisc
After 36 ideas, 6,500 student votes and 550 tweets we are delighted to announce the final 21 winners of the Summer of Student Innovation competition.
John Shemilt
John is the director of ICT at Imperial College. He is one of the RUGIT representatives who have worked with Jisc in creating and shaping the student innovation project as part of our new co-design approach to innovation.
Imperial College London
Co-design
1 July 2013
Student journey
Higher Education
Further Education
England
Scotland
Wales