Data Education for Schools is seeking support in  five thematic areas. We want to create tailored partnerships that are high in impact and deliver against your organisational priorities. Areas for support can be mixed to create a bespoke partnership arrangement that offers a scalable level of involvement and investment.

Mitigating poor school technology infrastructure through the creation of a technology lending library.  Schools lack the infrastructure required to educate pupils in data and computing skills. Rollout of our data led curriculum is currently limited by this lack of suitable equipment. With your support, a technology lending library would be created. This library would consist of sensors, receiving stations, micro-computers, software licences and other relevant items to enable young people to collect, process and critically analyse data within a wide range of contexts.

Addressing a lack of technology understanding in schools by creating a learning technology assistants programme. The learning technology assistants would supports schools in the effective use of the technology lending library. This team of people would be trained to understand local authority technology infrastructure and  the setup and use of the technology lending library kits. Each technology assistant would work in a school 1 day per week to ensure efficient and effective use of equipment and to ensure the teacher and schools were able to maximise the learning opportunities for learners.

Inspiring young people and their communities by creating an inspirational data learning space. The DataCity would be an interactive, immersive learning space that demonstrates how data impacts our everyday life. The DataCity would be a space for young people and local communities to learn about data, take part in data driven problem solving tasks and interact with data professionals to gain a real-world understanding of data applications. Taking advantage of the University’s advanced research in learning spaces, the DataCity would also allow collaboration between schools both in Scotland and globally encouraging shared understanding of data and how it is impacting society.

Developing new knowledge by investing in educational research to ensure our programme evolves as an understanding of data, ethics and society advances. A research team consisting of two research fellows and three PhD students would be created to evaluate both the process of defining and delivering data education and its impact. This will help the project understand its success and replicate it, as well as test new approaches to educating young people creatively and in a high-impact way.

Ensuring real-world business relevant skills and capabilities are at the core of data learning by supporting an industry professional in the classroom programme. The industry professional in the classroom programme is investigating different approaches to making sure that business relevant skills and capabilities are integrated into classroom learning.  Several models are being considered including:

      • Co-development of learning materials where the business provides data led business problems to provide context to learning
      • Establishing a relationship between a business and 1 or more schools where an employee works with school over a complete academic year to support classroom learning, share knowledge and support the development of employment schools.