Interview with Professor Michael Kölling

Staff Writer Advay Jain discusses programming and computing education with Professor Michael Kölling of King’s College London (KCL).

Michael Kölling is a Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Informatics at KCL. He was previously the Vice Dean (Education) of the Faculty of Natural, Mathematical and Engineering Sciences from 2017 to 2023. 

On 24 September 2025, Professor Kölling was awarded the Lovelace Medal for Computing Education by the British Computing Society, recognising his global contribution to computing education.

Roar had the opportunity to interview him about his journey in computing education, the inspiration behind his work, and what this recognition means to him.

His motivation for computer science teaching started early on.

M: “I was very deeply interested in computer science, especially in programming and programming languages […] I just had ideas about how you could or should teach programming, where I thought it wasn’t done as well as it could have been. At the same time, there was a new programming paradigm coming up, object-oriented programming […] I chose to do my PhD on developing software tools for teaching and learning programming. That was the start. […] It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t done it that it’s not necessarily a geeky, technical thing. It can be very creative and fulfilling, giving a sense of joy in creating things […] My goal for a long time has been to expose it to more people and, more recently, to create opportunities for every child in the country to experience the joy of programming.”

With the increased implementation of artificial intelligence (AI), programmers are adopting ‘vibe coding’ within their workflow to generate code and then work off it. However, for beginners, it is crucial to nail the basics.

M: “If you just want to have a bit of fun, then that’s fine — vibe code all you want and go for it. But if you’re serious about becoming a software engineer or professional, it’s one of the most dangerous things. When I work with AI, it spits out something that looks excellent, but often it’s wrong. You correct it, it apologises, fixes it — and it’s still wrong. You go through that four or five times before it’s right. That doesn’t work if you don’t fully understand what you’re doing. […] For expert programmers, AI is a fantastic tool, it speeds you up. But what we want is experts with AI tools, not AI tools instead of experts, because otherwise you’ll produce buggy code. […] You might think you can go through life just with AI, but as soon as you start doing really interesting, cutting-edge work, you can’t trust it.”

Countries have different approaches to computer science education. Which country do you think is doing it the right way?

M: “I don’t think there is one right way […] In England, we are doing quite well […] it’s far from perfect, but we’ve had computing or computer science in the national curriculum for eight years. We were way ahead of many other countries but there’s room for improvement. It was great to get in the curriculum […] but I think it’s time to maybe adapt it a bit and review it. It’s maybe too early, too much of an emphasis on computer science, the science bit, the more professional software engineering bit. […] Up to GCSE level or so, I think we should not teach really, it shouldn’t be training in software development. It should teach what every educated citizen should know about the digital world […] There should be computing for everyone, but it’s different from training someone to become a software engineer. […] That is why I like the Danish curriculum. They have much more a sort of humanistic approach to computing in their curriculum but they had a change of government which then killed it off. It’s a nice curriculum, but is not actually enacted at the moment.”

Many are put off by the ‘I’m not a coding person’ attitude, reinforced by the outdated image of programmers as ‘hackers.’ What is your take on this?

M: “Software development and programming is a team sport. Working in groups is essential. Anything that’s interesting is done in teams. There’s almost nothing being done where a single person sits alone in a room and does something revolutionary on their own. That’s not happening anymore. Teamwork is essential. […] In real-world teams in companies, you need some people doing work that is not technical. I’m a computer scientist and I do a lot of work now where I don’t write code. […] You can do that best when you have a good understanding of what it’s like to write code, because I can manage the programmers since I know what it’s like to be one. […] The best programmers, if you study computer science or programming, will often end up in jobs later in their career where they’re not writing code. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important to know how to do it, because if you want to manage a team that produces code, you have to understand what it’s like.”

The emphasis on teamwork in programming is essential, especially since it’s common in the industry.

Computer science is a very male-dominated field, spanning from corporate to educational settings. As someone who works in computer science education, how do you see pushing more Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives for computer science, and how to get more women involved in this field?

M: “I think that’s actually a nice closure, because we’re coming full circle to where we started. At the very beginning, in response to your first question, I talked about creativity – the feeling of joy in computing when you’re creating new things. I think an approach to computing that emphasises creativity and making things, rather than focusing too much on the technical side, rigour, and theory, would attract a much more even distribution of pupils across gender and other disadvantaged groups. A different approach that relates computing more to daily life, activities, and creativity could help break the reputation it has as a male-dominated, “geeky” field. It doesn’t have to be that. We just have to change how we teach it to make it more attractive to girls, for example.”

What are you working on at the moment?

M: “My current research is actually exactly in the area that I’ve just talked about. I’m a tool maker, I build software tools, that’s my area of education. We are currently working on a new development environment for exactly this creative programming in schools. We are trying to build a tool that makes that possible. It’s a system called Strype, which is a browser-based development environment based around Python that is aimed very squarely at sort of GCSE level or just before, with the intention to enable a much more creative approach to teaching. That’s actually the most important thing, it allows a different approach to teaching. So that’s the most active project I’m working on at the moment with my team. We’ve released the first version, the 1.0 version already, it’s already out there, but there is still a lot of work to do. It’s not finished. So that will continue for another couple of years at least.”