Cornwall College
I have been working with Cornwall College to teach software development at Level Four.
Thanks to mutual collaboration between Software Cornwall and Cornwall College, great progress has been being made to achieve tighter integration between industry expertise and requirements and further education students.
It has long been a complaint of industry that recent graduates lack many core skills required to integrate into a working environment and so Cornwall College, which has always had a strong focus on practical skills, has been trialing new courses and new techniques to ensure graduates can step into a business straight from school and be productive from day one.
I was approached by the College to offer intensive group training and best-practice guidance to a cohort of Level 4 Apprentices, running a new Trailblazer apprenticeship scheme. These apprentices work across the UK in various roles and communicate remotely with their mentor using industry-standard remote collaboration tools.
Intensive weeks involve the whole cohort assembling at a convenient site for a week and include taught sessions, workshops and one-on-one help with work-based projects. Our focus as industry experts is on current tooling, libraries and languages as well as the importance of using version control and well defined Software Development Methodologies, with an emphasis on their application in the workplace.
It’s a slightly different role which I am enjoying greatly, and I have received great support from the college to enable him to get across the varied lessons available from his many years of industry experience on projects of every size.