UCL students bag “life changing” grants to develop ed-tech idea

Miguel Dos Santos (UCL Philosophy PhD student), Jeremie Coullon (UCL Civil Environmental and Geomatic Engineering PhD student) and Angus Waite (UCL History graduate) will receive funding and support as part of Jisc’s Summer of Student Innovation.

The student ideas competition called for technology ideas that could improve the student experience in further or higher education and skills, and attracted dozens of entrants whose pitches accumulated 7,613 votes in total on the Elevator website.

The team’s idea, Know it Wall, is a website recently launched to popularise academic research across the arts and sciences. 

As one of the winning ideas, the team has now been given £2,000 in funding and will receive support from Jisc experts to work on their project over the coming months, an award described as “life changing” by a previous winner.

Previous winners include a platform for research participants, a student feedback tool, apps to help apprentices, and tools to support accessibility and inclusion.

Paul Bailey, Senior Co-design Manager at Jisc, said: “The Summer of Student Innovation competition is now in its fourth year, but the fantastic ideas just keep on coming, proving that students are a great source of invaluable on-the-ground knowledge and innovation when it comes to ed-tech.

“As usual, we received many exciting and innovative ideas and choosing the winners was a difficult task. We chose these entrants because their ideas were innovative and exciting, while addressing new opportunities in educational technology. They also offer potential ideas we can develop into products, and have real potential to offer a genuine impact in learning, teaching or research.

“Miguel, Jeremie and Angus should feel very proud to have been named as winners. I look forward to seeing how their concepts develop over the coming months.”