UWE BoxED: empowering students in the ‘real world’ – providing responsible research and innovation opportunities through the BoxED project

Abstract

The Faculty of Health and Applied Sciences at the University of the West of England, Bristol has been piloting a schools outreach project entitled BoxED (EDucation in a Box) since 2015. School activities are inspired from the research and teaching of our academics, and the BoxED team have developed a series of hour long activities, linked to the national curriculum, which are delivered in schools across the south-west region. Alongside the somewhat obvious benefits to school pupils, this project presents numerous opportunities and benefits for our students to develop ‘real-world’ skills, enabling them to successfully enter the employment market on graduating from their studies. The challenge now is to ensure the success can be built upon by securing future funding to enable a greater number of students the opportunity to engage with the project and they themselves to then develop those necessary enterprise and entrepreneurial skills appropriately, alongside their chosen subject of study – ready for the ‘real-world’.

Keywords:

• Outreach
• employment
• STEM
• students
• engagement
• research

Acknowledgements

We would also like to acknowledge the following researchers, academics and technical staff for their assistance in the development of the activities: Gabrielle Wheway, Sarah Bateman, Sarah Almond, Dawn Arnold, Joseph Payne, Janet Watkins, Hardeep Adams, Harriet Croombe, David Fernandez, John Hancock, David Veal, Jon Winfield, Ioannis Ieropolous, Victoria Davenport, Saliha Saad, Jack Bevan, Kathryn Last, Shona Nelson, Tim Craig, Adele Ainger, Man-Kim Cheung and Corra Boushel.