Upgrade Your World (Overseas Fieldwork Project)

Overview

This unit provides students with the opportunity to engage in a group project to demonstrate and consolidate their IT skills, knowledge and professional behaviours. IT is multi-faceted, complex, and applied and as such can easily be ‘humanitarian’. Projects will be focused on the use of IT for positive social impact providing students with an understanding of the nature and principles of social and community enterprise.

Unit learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an ability to work in a project team environment on a project focussed on the use of IT for positive social impact
2. Apply a range of analytical, technical, project management and problem solving skills to a real life organisational setting
3. Demonstrate an understanding of how IT can contribute to social and community enterprise
4. Show evidence of self-reliance and time management skills, and an ability to organise a project in order to gain greater independence as a learner and project team member
5. Demonstrate increased awareness and understanding of ethical and professional behaviours in an organisational context

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Assessment

Content

At the commencement of the project, deliverables need to be identified and agreed upon by project groups and the academic convenor, and clear expectations set in terms of requirements for assessment. In addition to this, students will be able to apply some of the following skills developed in previous units to a social impact project:

• Communication skills in dealing with clients and colleagues
• Analysis and requirements gathering and modelling
• Design
• Implementation
• Project planning and management
• Quality assurance
• Test planning and execution
• Working to standards
• Technical documentation
• Document version control