Innovative project inspires Brighton students to volunteer

In 2018, we launched a pilot project in Brighton with Greater Brighton Metropolitan College to recruit students as Code Club volunteers. Four students from the college worked with the City Academy Whitehawk, a local primary school, to set up and run a Code Club — a valuable, exciting, and innovative opportunity for them!

The starting point

Dan Powell, Code Club Programme Manager, and Anna Pearson, Code Club Regional Coordinator for Yorkshire and the North East, initiated the project. The starting point was to find a college that was keen to get involved.

Dan met Emma Harrington, Curriculum Manager for Creative Industries at Greater Brighton Metropolitan College, at the Brighton Science Festival. Emma was excited about the opportunity this pilot would offer her students, and so the college was found!

‘’I wanted our students to experience the breadth of opportunities within the digital careers landscape. I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity for our students to be able to work with Code Club and offer school children the chance to tap into essential IT and digital skills that the future workforce requires.”

– Emma Harrington, Curriculum Manager for Creative Industries at Greater Brighton Metropolitan College

Recruiting student volunteers

To start recruiting student volunteers to run a Code Club, Dan and Anna developed a step-by-step guide for the college. This resource provided guidance for the lecturer on volunteer recruitment and training. For the students, the resource included all the information they needed to set up and run a 12-week club.

Emma used this guide to recruit four student volunteers who would set up and run a Code Club at City Academy Whitehawk.

‘’I felt that it was important for us to recruit the ‘right’ candidates for the role of student Code Club facilitator. The application and interview process outlined in the guide allowed us to review the candidate’s suitability for the role in order to ensure that students interests and goals were matched to our outcomes.”  

– Emma Harrington, Curriculum Manager for Creative Industries at Greater Brighton Metropolitan College

Finding a primary school to collaborate with  

Emma reached out to the City Academy Whitehawk, a local primary school in Brighton, and arranged a preliminary meeting to talk through the proposed pilot idea. This meeting was followed up with the student volunteers and the primary school staff to finalise the details.

How does Code Club work at City Academy Whitehawk?

The Code Club runs weekly during term time and is attended by eight children from Years 4, 5, and 6. The student volunteers from Greater Brighton Metropolitan College are supported by members of staff from the academy.

With guidance from the student volunteers, the children are working through the Code Club Scratch projects and creating their own games and animations with code.

Student volunteer Sydney shares her experience of taking part in the programme:

“I liked working with the kids, they were enthusiastic about coding and the projects were very simple for them to follow and complete. And they were able to ask us questions when they struggled.”

– Sydney Lichauco, Brighton MET Student and Code Club volunteer

What’s next for Greater Brighton MET College?

‘’I would like to continue to develop further links by offering the school children opportunities to be involved in digital tasters here at Brighton MET College.

Every digital college should incorporate this scheme into their programme! This provides real work experience for our students, not just centred on games design, but to develop related skills relevant to the industry. It enables students to pass on technical skills, as well as to develop teaching and planning skills, and to gain further invaluable experience of teamwork. It also reinforces the core professional skills that we teach and nurture here at Brighton MET.”

– Emma Harrington, Curriculum Manager for Creative Industries at Greater Brighton Metropolitan College

If you work within a college and are interested in setting up a student-led Code Club, reach out to us at support@codeclub.org.