Leys-Oxford App Club

The Leys-Oxford App Club supports young people from the Leys Community Development Initiative who are passionate about learning new mobile app development skills and broadening their experiences and knowledge. It is part of Oxford University's SCIENCE TOGETHER initiative, which is a brand new, grass-roots programme that harnesses the power of community-led collaborative research projects, bringing together Oxford scientists and people who live and work in Oxfordshire, to address major issues and questions impacting local people's lives. In the case of App Club, it brings Oxford University computer scientists to the youth centre for closer knowledge sharing and co-creation opportunities.

The mission of the club is to transfer step-by-step app development skills and knowledge to club participants over a six-week period. The objectives are for the young people to learn about the life cycle of app development, understand the diverse skills involved in the app development, and develop team collaboration skills.

Through initial explorations, we have designed a 6-week app club programme, with a clear objective of producing an app prototype that can help young people to digitise the process of signing-in an event at the centre so that they can avoid the existing paper-based process and the centre can keep a digital record of the attendance. The young people are passionate about the potential of the app for simplifying their current experiences with the centre and helping with the promotion of the centre.

The outcome app 'CDI app' will be further tested with young people visiting the centre in the summer and jointly with the new Leys CDI website. We are very excited about this new initiative and a new form of 'Science Together'.