Oxford Lifelong Learning

University of Oxford

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Oxford Lifelong Learning

University of Oxford

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Dr Nick Day

Departmental Lecturer in Data Science and Computing

Assessor for Data Science pathway of the Certificate of Higher Education programme

Tutor for Visiting Computer Science Students

Planet icon https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickday1992/

Dr Nicholas M. Day has over ten years of experience as a computer science educator and researcher. He has taught at Oxford Lifelong Learning (OLL) since 2016 on a range of programming, software engineering, artificial intelligence and data science courses. He completed his PhD in Computer Science Education Research (CSER) in 2019 and now supervises PhD candidates seeking to measure the effectiveness of AI-first pedagogies.

Since the 2024/25 academic year, Nick has had the privilege of working under Professor David J Malan to deliver Harvard’s CS50 course through OLL. CS50 has seven million enrolments on edX and has enabled many to start their careers in STEM. Furthermore, Nick also gives tutorials to undergraduate computer science students in algorithms and data structures, and the principles of programming.

Nicholas is a Member of the British Computing Society (MBCS), a certified External Examiner, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).

Nicholas primarily teaches Python via interactive Jupyter Notebooks (ipynb files), which allow students to combine code with commentary in the form of markdown cells. These Python notebook files are lightweight, versatile and accessible, requiring minimal setup, and can be exported to multiple formats. Nick uses learning activities in Canvas to compliment the weekly lectures, such as discussion threads on relevant themes and topical news articles, and quizzes to check knowledge of key concepts.

Nick also applies innovative methods through teaching Harvard’s CS50 course. This includes a pre-configured, cloud-based version of VS Code and automated formative feedback on problem set exercises via unit testing, as well as bespoke AI chatbot assistant which is designed to act as a tutor. Rather than revealing answers and full solutions (which would bypass learning), this chatbot is configured to promote discussion and guidance to scaffold learning, as a human tutor might.

Nicholas’ research interests are: Computer Science Education Research (CSER), Computing Education Research (CER), adaptive assessment, automated assessment, digital pedagogy, AI-first pedagogy, AI-first software development.

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