November 24, 2015. Final year students studying under the Bachelor of Net-Centric Computing (BNC) and Bachelor of Software Engineering (BSE) programmes at The University of the South Pacific (USP) shared their exciting experiences in working in the industry this semester.
Industry Experience Project (IEP) Course Coordinator and Assistant Lecturer Dinesh Kumar said the School of Computing, Information and Mathematical Sciences partnered with three companies, who provided ICT specific projects to our students.
Students completed their industry experience with companies like Software Factory Limited, FMF Foods Limited and the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development based at USP.
The IEP course aims to provide them with an environment in which they can develop professional skills and apply their skills acquired during their three years of studies to a real-life problem that has been sourced from ICT industry in the Pacific region, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs), or community organisations and NGOs.
This course provides students with industrial-based project experience to enable them to function as professionals in an ICT environment.
For this semester, a total of seven students were divided into three teams who were allocated to projects provided by:
• Software Factory on their project called Researchsoft;
• FMF Ltd on the development of their company specific Performance Evaluation Information System and;
• PaCE-SD, USP on a Research and Development type project called the Data Management System.
Mr Kumar said two of the projects, the Performance Evaluation System and Data Management System were developed in the IEP lab at the Japan-Pacific ICT Centre while the team allocated to the Researchsoft project, were based at SFL’s main office.
Software Factory Limited chairman Semi Tukana said the role of systems development and system design is important.
“For us it has been a successful year for the IEP with USP. We were involved from the first semester where we had four students and two students in the second semester,” he remarked.
Kunal Raj and Christopher Prasad thanked Software Factory Limited for the opportunity to show their applied skills in carrying out projects provided by experienced industry professionals.
“We would spend hours late at night doing our projects and I applaud my colleagues for a job well done. I wish thank our coordinator for his advice and guidance throughout and of course, our project supervisor for giving us valuable industry experience,” Mr Prasad said.
“Although the task was daunting and challenging, we were prepared and determined to accomplish it,” he noted.
Jared Ali and Sheevani Chand said the performance management system they developed for FMF will help to assess the progress towards the KPIs and evaluation of the success in reaching their targets.
The third team developed a data management system for PaCE-SD involving work in three modules including providing solutions for raw data and developing a resource and events management system.
Some of the challenges the students faced were learning new technology and coding language, learning various development styles, understanding requirement definitions and managing the study workloads.
Senior lecturer Dr David Rohindra commended the students for their efforts noting that USP is geared to churn out industry-ready students who will become the future of tomorrow.
“Our students have the potential in meeting the needs of the industry and they need your support. The way forward for us is partnership with the industry,” he stressed.
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