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The needs of businesses in the digital sector are changing rapidly. To boost graduate employability, our courses need to keep up with the fast-paced nature of tech and deliver what industry demands.

Working with leading digital employers, we’ll design industry-approved degrees and innovative curricula to make sure university teaching aligns with employers’ needs.

How we’ll achieve this

The Institute of Coding will create courses in key areas such as data science and cyber security. We’ll design degrees that help students solve real-world challenges – either as digital specialists or as part of a wider set of skills.

Tasters and extra-curricular events

Many learners know that digital skills are important to their career, but they might feel intimidated by the subject or don’t know how to get started.

To encourage more people to get involved, we’ll run taster sessions and extra-curricular events around the country. For example, the University of Exeter have developed summer schools for non-computer science students.

New curricula and accreditation standard

The IoC is working with industry and education partners to develop exciting new curricula for undergraduate, postgraduate and distance learning courses.

We’ll design courses that make sure learners leave education with the skills they need for success in the digital economy.

We’ll also set up a panel to help us define a new industry-driven standard for accrediting IoC learners. This will mean graduates can prove to employers they have the skills their business needs.

New ways to inspire students

We’ll gear learning towards industry success by:

• Bringing industry to students – we’ll add industrial elements to online and face-to-face teaching.
• Bringing students to industry – we’ll provide placements, short courses, summer schools, and more. We’ll involve employers in assessment and tuition, so our courses benefit everyone.

To give students the chance to apply their skills, we’ll encourage:

• Student enterprises – we aim to create a national consultancy for setting up student enterprises to give more students the opportunity to work on projects for real clients.
• Innovative spaces – Higher Education Institutes will create spaces to encourage people to join a range of teaching and training activities. These will include software development and enterprise skills development.

By giving students more opportunities to engage with industry, they’ll graduate feeling confident that they have what it takes to make a real difference in their career.

Analytics

There are many leading academics in data analytics, but as a whole, Higher Education lags behind other sectors. We’ll combine our expertise to mainstream analytics within the sector.

Using analytics at a number of IoC sites, we’ll record a range of areas, from retention to effectiveness of intervention strategy.

In 2019, we’ll also launch the Institute of Coding Career Coach (IoC3). This will gather information on learners’ interests, skills and goals via gamification and natural language.

If you want to get involved with any of these projects, talk to us.