Members of our Computer Science A Level Year 12 group attended a Discovery Day at the Lancaster Campus of the University of Cumbria on Thursday, 16th January. The new Computer Science course at Cumbria University has been created with the input of BAE, so this was an opportunity to see how this collaboration had worked to produce a Degree course.
In the morning, the students were introduced to ‘emojineering’ and then in an indication of the breadth of careers in Computer Science they were challenged to design a dating app!
After lunch in the refectory, a tour of the campus made best use of the nicest weather of the term so far. Prizes for spotting the giant koi carp in the pond went unclaimed, sadly. To end the day, the last session introduced the students to effective construction of AI prompts to achieve the best result in tasks. These two taster sessions were led by lecturers from the University, while other students and University staff answered questions about accommodation and student life in general. University life isn’t for everyone, and certainly isn’t the only way to achieve a career in computer science, but knowledge is power, and our participants came home with an awareness of choices they had perhaps not seen before.
