The Impact of IT Bootcamp on Student Learning - Experience from ICT Enabled Experiential-Based Course

Abstract

We have been teaching an experiential-based course for fist year master students. In the last two years, we have added to the course external activities such as Hackathon and Bootcamp. These external activities helped students internalize how important are soft skills and involvement of external stakeholders to succeed in developing relevant startup projects. This year, we wanted to evaluate if students were getting what we declared. We conducted a survey on students’ perception of different dimensions: soft skills challenges (teamwork, communication with stakeholders, presentation, negotiation, and innovation), technical challenges and project management (PM) challenges, before and at the end of the Bootcamp days. We found out that the mean values regarding soft skill challenges and project management vary, while values regarding technical challenge have not changed before and after Bootcamp. The overall outcomes of the study contribute to conceptualizing an early model integrating student startup formation with course learning outcomes.