Solent University - Genesis
Working in multi-skilled project teams through the one-week digital business start-up challenge (Genesis). These teams including branding, marketing, designers, developers, film promotions and pitching to potential investors.
Solent University provides a number of initiatives for students to help them to become more confident, gain experience working on projects and improve their employability prospects.
Within our Computing Subject Group, we offer full-year placements, micro-placements and internships that last between 6 weeks to 11 months. Additionally, we provide support on research projects to working on outreach projects, so there are many ways our students get involved.
We also have Solent Futures, where the University’s employability and enterprise areas sit alongside Solent Creatives, a university based creative agency offering many opportunities to students.
The recent Genesis Challenge project was an initiative led by Liam Charmer in conjunction with Solent Creatives. A former Solent Computing graduate, Liam introduced the concept at a lecture at one of the Industry “Happy Hour” talks offered to students on Web Development. This was then emailed out to all of students to get involved.
The aim was to “Take part in a one-week challenge that aims to launch a new digital business. Work with a team of designers, developers, consultants and more and gain valuable insights into digital start-ups and innovation. Not only will you gain tremendous experience, but you will have opportunities to network, learn the craft and be part of the journey of a new digital start-up business.”
Several students from the Computing Subject Group collaborated with others from a wide range of courses on the one-week project. Students were set a brief at the start of the week and had to create an app to run design sprints, using design sprint methodologies. They had to create a digital discipline which was good for networking, learning to work together to design, develop and launch a digital business.
This was promoted through the Solent Creatives blog
This was communicated out through Twitter on #GenesisChallenge
Since this several of the students have gained placements for the third year of their course.
Two videos for interest:
