Our vision is to establish a new research centre in computing education connecting expertise in education, computing, robotics, and related disciplines. We will carry out research around school education, higher education, and adult learning in computing, extending to both formal and informal learning.
Computing Education research is a new and emerging field, with a small but growing body of research. Our interdisciplinary centre is enabling collaboration, sharing of ideas and truly integrated work between researchers in different departments (and potentially other institutions).
Interdisciplinary computing education
We are planning to work together on research projects relating to the following three strands:
Strand 1: Programming & Robotics
We will work with the concepts, tools, techniques and pedagogical approaches in the area of programming, digital making, physical computing and robotics. We will seek to develop our theoretical understanding of concepts and pedagogy, while making a key contribution to developing methodological frameworks and tools in this area.
Strand 2: Digital equity
It is widely known that computing has not historically been accessible across the digital divide and that there is a gender imbalance in the subject. Research here will focus on making computing accessible to all regardless of difference, including with regard to gender, disability and social class. This extends to all age groups, not just school children.
Strand 3: Data and education
Through research, we need to develop a better understanding of big data and data science in education. An understanding of data is increasingly becoming a key competence for all students both as a core component of socio-technically aware citizenship and in employment. In this strand we will look at both how big data can be used in computing education and how we can educate students about data.
Moving forward
Part of our remit is to establish funding to continue and we are also working together to initiate new interdisciplinary projects.
We are interested in working with other institutions and with schools to set up new research projects, and also in collaborating with industry and other partners.
We also wish to engage with schools as participants in our research projects. We hope to plan a series of events that will be of interest to educators, including teachers.