Pradesha Puvanendiranathan

Information Management/Law student Pradesha Puvanendiranathan admits to having a "little inner hippy" and says that at the very least, her Communications degree "taught me how to be organised."

Together with six other students Pradesha won the 2007 Malian Foundation Community Partnership Prize for a UTS Shopfront project in which she helped to develop the prototype for 'The Community Living Kit', a digital publication designed to assist people to move out of institutional settings and into their own homes.

Pradesha says that her studies in Information Management have equipped her with skills to help others in society, as well as an understanding of the world around and "a different way of looking at things."

"I started my degree straight out of high school so I chose Information Management and Law because there seemed to be quite a lot of things I could do with them at the end and I like to keep my options open."

Although initially doing Communications as a means "to balance out law", Pradesha Puvanendiranathan decided to inject her passion for helping others into her final project for Information Management.

Working with the community partner Community Connections Australia, Pradesha developed a computer program comprising of a "virtual learning environment" which helps people with disabilities manage everyday tasks which "generally people take for granted."

"I worked for a small community organisation who essentially develop educational programs for people with disabilities. It's about teaching them l guess life skills that generally people take for granted.

"So things like moving into your own home, how to entertain people, just essentially life skills to help people integrate into society and live a fulfilling, happy life. Up to this point they've had a series of books called 'The Community Living Kit' which consists of four books (based on transportation, employment, entertaining in a house and moving into a new house), with those modules used as a learning tool to teach people with disabilities."

"The major work I did for my professional project at the end of that degree was something I really got into. It had to do with organising information and material in a way that's accessible to various groups. The project was associated with people with disabilities. So it was looking at that target audience and going, 'Well, here are the things you need to address and here are the accessibility issues' and then going on and addressing those issues and coming up with a feasible information plan and sort of doing it that way."

Despite having very little previous IT experience, Pradesha honed in on skills she had acquired through her Information Management electives to help her conceptualise ideas into an appropriate format.

"I did 'Organising Information for Access' , which I drew upon quite a bit because it was a lot about how websites and a digital interface are put together to be accessible to people. That was the information problem, how to turn this paper-based learning tool into something more virtual.

"I wrote up an article about doing a virtual learning environment which would essentially be like a computer game, it'd be two dimensional and it would sort of create a virtual world in which you can learn on the computer."

Reflecting on her winning project as well as her reasoning behind choosing communications, Pradesha says that her Shopfront experience proved both rewarding and enjoyable.

"I really enjoyed doing that because there was such a huge interactivity with the people.

"I guess getting back in touch with my little inner hippy, it's the idea of helping people. That's one of the reasons I got into law, I had this idea of 'I'm going to save the world.' I haven't done the practical component of my law degree yet but it's funny, it's with the Information Management part of my degree that I actually feel like I've done something useful.

"I found it to be really rewarding. I think it's the sort of work I'd like to be doing when I finish uni, I'd like to be working within an area where I feel useful as opposed to just being a corporate drone...I think just having that knowledge is pretty fantastic, coming out with this sort of understanding of your society and a different way of looking at things.

"I loved Power and Change in Australia and those sorts of subjects that do give you a sense of looking at the world in a new way and questioning the power structures in society."