Todd, Managing Director at Optimising IT, has been working with students at Exeter College to deliver IT and cyber security sessions.
Todd started his sessions in January 2023 and ran these for 12 weeks. The scheme was funded by the Government (Department for Science, Innovation & technology) with the key aim of getting people from industry into classrooms at colleges. In this instance it was to support students studying IT and cyber security.
The sessions were conducted in partnership with Department for Science, Innovation & technology, Exeter College, Teched Pro, South West Cyber Security Cluster, Cyberfutures, and Optimising IT.
Over the 12 weeks the sessions covered many areas including – Cyber safety, staying safe online, modern encryption, CV building and interview skills.
Immersive Labs is the leader in people-centric cyber resilience. They are trusted by many of the world’s largest organisations and governments, which see them as a strategic partner that helps them unlock new levels of resilience across their entire organisation.
Immersive Labs unlock a new level of resilience by providing hands-on cybersecurity training and realistic simulations to evaluate individual and team capabilities and decision-making against the latest threats.
Students were able to gain a huge amount of knowledge from their sessions with Todd and the feedback shows how valuable these sessions have been for the students.
Both teacher and student feedback has been very positive with students saying, “It was fascinating”, “I really enjoyed completing labs on Immersive Labs. They were very fun and interactive”, “It was really interesting to use the tools real cyber security professionals use”.
George Glashier from TechEd programme said, “The difficulty pitch of the workshop content was about right for the learners, offering enough of a challenge to be engaging whilst also being achievable. Todd made good use of a variety of interaction patterns, such as open discussion and some individual and pair work. Todd also deployed targeted questions to ask specific students about key elements of the content to check understanding.”
Todd delivered the final session last week which included a test for the students. The test consisted of a cyber questions and answer quiz, with a twist. They went over all of the subject matter covered in the sessions to date in an open Q and A and correct answers won prizes. While Incorrect answers got the gift of knowledge.
This was an un-paid opportunity for Todd but one that could help influence and shape the next generation of the cyber workforce and encourage them to get into cyber security and help plug the skills gap.
