Year 3 students recently worked with NATs on an R&D project that involved examining potential improvements to the learning resources that feed into their ATC training programme. NATs are world leaders in their field and it was a real privilege to work alongside such a prestigious organisation. Pleasingly our students rose to the challenge and in the final proposal presentations that took place on Friday 4th December Chris Downey and Lee McGregor were extremely impressed with the creativity and professionalism on show. This was a tough brief and what was produced went beyond the expectations of both teaching staff and industry professionals. The proposals produced ranged from identity systems to apps and interactive learning learning platforms that link digital and physical experiences. This comment from course manager, Lee McGregor’s indicates the level that our students are working on, “You’ve taken the time to identify something that we didn’t know about and had no idea we needed. But now we know about it we realise that we really do need it.”

According to Chris Dorney, ATCO instructor “The quality of work that was produced and presented back was overall of an excellent standard with some great interpretations of the brief.  It was very evident that the students had put in a lot of thought, time and effort into creating a product that they felt met what was asked.”

Indeed the proposals were so good that a selection of students have been chosen to develop their ideas further into a more advanced pitch that will be made to senior managers at the NATs headquarters in Fareham in the new year.

Students chosen were:

Katy Hobson – who proposed to rebrand the training scheme as ‘the Academy’.

Tom Eyres – who proposed a slick and professional learning app that according to Lee McGregor “could have been designed by our ‘corporate comms’ team!”

Matt Elmer – who proposed a multi platform interactive learning environment.

Sophie Byrom – who created ‘Observation Desk’ an interactive learning platform that utilises a touch sensitive information bank.

& Zoe Prosser – whose app ‘Paper Planes’ enables trainees to revise and test their knowledge before rewarding them with a bespoke 3D printed paper plane.

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