It looked like a cross between a class reunion, a professional conference, and a job interview in a Penn State Abington tech classroom last week.
Joe Oakes, senior information sciences and technology (IST) lecturer, regularly invites alumni and colleagues to interact with students. So when he put out the word that junior and senior IST majors planned to present their final projects, his network showed up to offer support and feedback.
The student teams constructed solutions from back end to front end, and the experts in the audience dissected every aspect from design to project management to presentation.
A team from IST421: Advanced Enterprise Integration developed a website for psychology researchers, using an application they hadn't even learned in class.
"They went rogue on me. They did a great job but went off on their own," Oakes laughed. "I'm okay with the technology as long as they can pull it off."