Professor Michael Kölling from the Computing Laboratory received a National Teaching Fellowship award at a prestigious ceremony held in London on the 24 September 2008. The Higher Education Authority made the award in recognition of Michael's innovative work in developing the BlueJ and Greenfoot systems which help students to learn computer programming more easily than when using traditional methods. The award also acknowledges his highly successful approach in advancing the teaching and learning of computer programming worldwide.

The award, worth £10,000, will help support the ongoing development of the Greenfoot interactive Java programming environment,. It will also go towards supporting further activities to widen the uptake of Greenfoot by schools and by society at large. Prof Kölling already runs a highly successful programme of Greenfoot workshops for local schools, contributes to articles in computing magazines and maintains the Greenfoot web site which hosts a computer games gallery where Greenfoot users can upload their latest games creations. Michael said:

" I am very happy about the recognition that this award brings to our work. The money will help to accelerate the activities we are planning to support Greenfoot programming in schools in our area, and I am looking forward to making our work more widely accessible. "

Since the 1990s, Prof Kölling has been working to address the shortage of computer scientists and programmers in the national employment market. Initially, this was through the development of BlueJ, a highly successful software system that fundamentally changes the way in which modern Java programming can be taught to beginners. Today, it is used in more than 850 institutions worldwide, including more than half of all English universities. Prof Kölling is also co-author of a text book on BlueJ, which is the best-selling Java text book in Europe and number two in the USA.

Building on this success, Prof Kölling has been working on the development of Greenfoot, an easy-to-use Java-based system designed to teach programming to secondary school students. With Greenfoot, students can create real interactive graphical computer applications, such as games and simulations, and so experience the challenge and satisfaction that arise from these activities.

Greenfoot is used at many schools and universities for programming teaching and, at present, there are more than 40 institutions actively using the system. The impact of Greenfoot on programming education was recognised last year, when the software won the Duke's Choice Award 2007, an industry award sponsored by Sun Microsystems.

It is anticipated that the success rate of Greenfoot will match that of BlueJ, with recent feedback from teachers and students about their experiences with Greenfoot demonstrating that it is already making a significant impact.

Published 27 October 2008
Contact: M.L.Bowman@kent.ac.uk