Schools, colleges and community engagement

School children looking at equipment in the server room, cables coming from the back

We have an active outreach programme, working with schools, colleges, and community groups to promote digital skills and digital careers to young people in South Wales.

We ensure that our work has an impact outside of academia by establishing strong links with local schools and outreach organisations within the South Wales community.

We provide workshops and activities for both primary and secondary schools and also offer CPD sessions for teachers. Examples of the workshops and activities that we offer can be found here.

STEM Ambassador Scheme

We have established a team of student STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Ambassadors who visit local primary and secondary schools to deliver workshops to pupils on coding and other important elements of computer science.

We have around 100 students every year who take up the opportunity to work as STEM Ambassadors and they are a key part of our delivery team, engaging directly with schools and young people to enthusiastically promote aspects of computing. We encourage all students within the School to get involved in the STEM Ambassadors scheme as it also brings personal benefits to Ambassadors in terms of developing their employability skills.

Technocamps

The STEM Ambassador Scheme supports the University’s work as a Technocamps hub, a Welsh Government programme providing young people across Wales with computing-based outreach sessions.

Our STEM Ambassadors can deliver Technocamps workshops on introductory programming languages such as Python, Scratch and Greenfoot, providing a gentle and fun introduction to computer science.

STEM Ambassadors have also contributed to activities within our School, assisting at Teacher Continuing Professional Development (CPD) workshops, University open days and College events such as the STEM Conference and STEM Live events.

Programming is fun and better when it is practiced more. It is also really rewarding when you debug something and you wrack your brain for what feels like ages – then it works.

Year 9 pupil following a Technocamps workshop