Education Lab

Copyright David Hodgkinson

Inspiring Education

Education Lab is a research and action group on Interdisciplinary Computer Science, Electronics and Electronic Engineering Education. Led by William Marsh, Paul Curzon and Peter McOwan, it is part of the Cognitive Science group at the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London. Our work has been funded to date by over £4 million in grants and donations from the Research Councils, Government and Industry.

Follow us on Twitter as @cs4fn and
@cas_london_crc

We aim to

• undertake world class research in the areas of computer science and electronic engineering education,
• develop innovative, effective globally leading approaches for teaching and learning interdisciplinary computer science, electronic engineering and digital technologies;
• develop innovative, internationally leading and pedagogically effective educational technology;
• create pedagogically strong educational resources that are used internationally to inspire and educate;
• Sustain a community of practice around computer science and electronic engineering education that feeds into the teaching of the school.

Our recent work has a strong focus on interdisciplinary computer science education in schools, both at primary and secondary level  through our ‘Computer Science for Fun’, TechPathways, ‘Sodarace’ and ‘Teaching London Computing’ Projects.  Our interests include computer science education in both formal and informal learning contexts including blended learning.

Our current projects are exploring topics such as:

• Unplugged computing to explain and inspire
• The importance of design in teaching programming
• The use of concept maps in computer science education
• Interdisciplinary computational thinking
• The pedagogy of programming
• The use of magic and mystery to teach computing, maths and science
• The digital divide and supporting IT literacy of older people.

We also run a Teaching Interest Group (a community of practice) for the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.

Our work has been supported financially by EPSRC, ESRC, the Royal Society, the European Union, Google, the Greater London Assembly, the UK Department of Education, Microsoft and ARM.

Curzon was a member of the Royal Society Working Group on Computing Education which produced the report, After the Reboot – Computing Education in UK Schools. Waite was commissioned to write one of the major literature reviews that it was based on.

We are currently collaborating with a range of other Universities in the UK and Internationally and have worked closely with Hertford College, University of Oxford and King’s College London.