ICT SHOWROOM – A JOINT STUDENT PROJECT EXHIBITION AND COMPETITION OF THREE UNIVERSITIES

Project-oriented courses are important tools to learn core engineering knowledge, skills and attitudes. However, it is not always that easy to motivate the faculty to create these types of learning activities or to facilitate the students to utilize the opportunity to join a design-build project. Turku University of Applied Sciences, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University have a set of project-based courses in their programs. After the ICT education units of these institutions moved into the same campus, efforts to further improve the cooperation was launched. One initiative was to facilitate the student projects somehow and, simultaneously, to get both students and faculty members to get familiar with each other and their ongoing activities. The result was ICT Showroom, an exhibition and competition event open for all student projects of the campus. In this paper, the ICT Showroom Student Project Exhibition and Competition event is described. The background of the idea, concept and practical issues and experiences are documented.