  Real Industry Projects and team work can have a great impact on student
learning but providing these activities requires significant commitment from
academics. It requires several years planning implementing to create a
collaborative learning environment that mimics the real world ICT (Information
and Communication Technology) industry workplace. In this project, staff from
all the three faculties, namely the Faculty of Health, Engineering and Science,
Faculty of Arts, Education and Human Development, and Faculty of Business and
Law in higher education work together to establish a detailed project
management plan and to develop the unit guidelines for participating students.
The proposed project brings together students from business, multimedia and
computer science degrees studying their three project-based units within each
faculty to work on a relatively large IT project with our industry partner,
Melbourne Zoo. This paper presents one multimedia software project accomplished
by one of the multi-discipline student project teams. The project was called
'Interactive ZooOz Guide' and developed on a GPS-enabled PDA device in 2007.
The developed program allows its users to navigate through the Zoo via an
interactive map and provides multimedia information of animals on hotspots at
the 'Big Cats' section of the Zoo so that it enriches user experience at the
Zoo. A recent development in zoo applications is also reviewed. This paper is
also intended to encourage academia to break boundaries to enhance students'
learning beyond classroom.
