Public Funding for Index Partners Limited

The **Digital Sandbox project** will develop a solution for universities and employers to organise virtual hackathons and competitions (e.g. business idea challenge, coding hackathons, etc.) for students. Universities are increasingly using hackathons and competitions to help students acquire employability skills, develop employer networks as well as showcase their skills and ideas to academic and employer communities. Although no reliable statistics are available, estimates suggest ~10,000 hackathons take place in universities worldwide annually. US, UK, EU and Australia account for over 50% of events. However, the onset of Covid-19 pandemic prompted many universities to cancel these programs, thereby, depriving students of critical learning opportunities. While most universities readily adapted existing platforms and tools (e.g. Zoom, MS Teams, etc) to launch online classes and internships, they have been less successful in migrating their hackathons and competitions online due to a lack of appropriate tools. The "Digital Sandbox" project intends to address this gap. There is no existing tool or platform to help universities and employers conduct online hackathons for students, end-to-end. In the post Covid-19 era, our solution will help elevate the scope and impact of these programs (and the learning outcomes) to a higher level, by enabling: 1) Employers to conduct cross-university and, even cross-border hackathons and competitions; 2) More than 10x students to participate in these events, without the inherent limitations (e.g. venue capacity, commute time, etc.) of the physical world; 3) Students to form cross-University and cross-border teams and thereby expanding exposure and network; 4) Judges to offer clear and structured feedback to all participants, thereby enhancing learning outcomes; 5) Students from disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g. with financial problems, physical disabilities, etc.) to participate in these opportunities by eliminating barriers to access; 6) Significant reduction of unit costs, and thereby making these programs more affordable and widespread. We will also conduct a pilot with 250 students from 20 UK universities during Q4 2020 and Q1 2021 to test the new platform with end-users to make it launch-ready as well as develop use cases to accelerated speed to market. In summary, our solution will help Universities to conduct more hackathons with more students in a more inclusive way with better learning outcomes at a lower unit cost. This, in turn, will help reduce the employability skills gap in the UK at a faster pace.