AI Hackathon for Post-16 Students

Monday 15 July 2024

The Digital Greenhouse in partnership with University College London (UCL) held an "exciting AI hackathon" for post-16 students, "designed to inspire young minds and equip them with essential skills in artificial intelligence and teamwork".

The event was part of the Digital Innovators Programme powered by First Central Group that has also included a series of virtual learning sessions giving students a deep dive into the topic of Artificial Intelligence with leading tutors from University College London, and a Student Summit conference event.

The hackathon challenge for the students was to generate an idea for an AI-powered app that connects young people with volunteering opportunities in their area.

The aim was to organise and optimise community volunteering by matching volunteers with opportunities based on their skills, interests, and availability.

The challenge was chosen to give the students the opportunity to demonstrate how AI can be used for good, as well as having to consider the question of ethics within its application. Focusing on volunteering also ties in to the Association of Guernsey Charities new campaign ‘Without Us’.

There were students from The Ladies’ College, The Sixth Form Centre and Elizabeth College all taking part in this one-day event. They worked on their solution in a time-pressured environment, receiving mentorship from the facilitators, and had to present their solutions to a panel of judges to compete for prizes.

The judges included Paul Torode, Group Head of Information & Technology Governance and Mikey Chammings, Site Reliability Engineer both from programme sponsors First Central Group, as well as Louise Leale, CEO of Youth Commission and Steve Grix, Digital Learning Specialist at Meganexus and representing UCL.

The teams were judged on their innovative use of AI, user experience, overall idea, teamwork and presentation skills.

The judges said it was a very close call to choose a winner as each team had different strengths, but in the end Team VLN from Elizabeth College took the win with only 0.25 of a point separating them from second place.

The team consisted of Sam Lowe, Archie Swash-Hardie, George Harris, and Jack Merveld who presented a platform that has a user interface mimicking popular social media sites, and a chatbot assists with account setup and finding suitable opportunities. Gamification elements were incorporated to engage users.

"We enjoyed the collaboration; it was a really good experience. We were pleasantly surprised with how much we learnt and discovered something new. It was honestly amazing. We enjoyed the chance to work as a team with our peers and work in a collaborative environment," the team remarked.

Judge Paul Torode commented: “We at First Central enjoy being involved with the Hackathon and seeing all the fantastic work the teams come up with. It is always of a very high quality and the students work well as a team.”