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Staff Profile

Chris Napier

Employability and Enterprise Lead

Background

NOTE: As of February 2021, I no longer work for the University and now work as a Civil Servant within the Cabinet Office. Please direct all queries to my PhD account c.napier1@ncl.ac.uk.  

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My role involves strategically planning demonstrator activities for our undergraduate programmes and improving our recruitment and allocation of demonstrators. I have been involved within our new curriculum implementation of 2019 and lead the planning for new tools and technologies. In 2019, I took over the role of Academic Lead for Employability and Enterprise. This role involves working with industry and employers to add their value to our taught programmes. 

I had the great honour of being nominated, shortlisted and then win the Outstanding Contribution to Teaching (SAgE) and The Student Choice Award in The Education Awards 2020. 

I am also currently a PhD Student in the Teaching Innovation Group (TIG) within the School of Computing. My research looks at improving student learning in Computer Science at undergraduate level. Part of my PhD involves working with the Outreach team to help plan events and look after the equipment. I studied my undergraduate degree at Newcastle and graduated my BSc in the summer of 2017. 

Alongside my PhD, I am also an active member of the School's Outreach team and help plan, organise and run events with local schools. For more information on the Outreach programme please see the following pages:

If you have any questions about Outreach then please send me an email or contact cs.outreach@ncl.ac.uk.

My undergraduate studies involved a lot of extracurricular activities such as founding the Newcastle University Computing and Technology Society (NUCATS) in October 2014 an going into local schools through the entirety of my degree.. I was President of NUCATS for 2 years of my undergraduate and then took a step back and became the Treasurer in the final year of my undergraduate degree. The first year of the Society saw us win the "Best New Society 2015" and "Angel of the North - Best Fundraising Society 2015" and the second year we won the "Best Society 2016". I am immensely proud of the Society and those who have helped make it special for the students at Newcastle. 

Teaching

Module staff (Academic year 2020-21):

  • CSC2033: Team Project Module (Module Leader)
  • CSC3095: Project and Dissertation in Computer Science (Module Leader)
  • CSC3422: Serverside Technologies (Module Leader)
  • ICM0043: Intercalating year for Computer Science Programmes (Module Leader)

Module staff (Academic year 2019-20):

  • CSC1033: Information Storage and Retrieval
  • CSC2022: Team Project Module
  • CSC3095: Project and Dissertation in Computer Science (Module Leader)
  • CSC3422: Serverside Technologies (Module Leader)
  • CSC3622: Reliability and Fault Tolerance (Module Leader)
  • ICM0043: Intercalating year for Computer Science Programmes (Module Leader)

Module staff (Academic year 2018-19):

  • CSC2022: Team Project Module
  • CSC3095: Project and Dissertation in Computer Science
  • CSC3422: Serverside Technologies

Module Demonstrator (Academic year 2017-18): 

  • CSC1021: Programming I
  • CSC1022: Programming II
  • CSC1024: Computer Architecture (Lead Demonstrator)
  • CSC2022: Team Project Module (Including Teaching Assistant responsibilities)
  • CSC2024: Database Technology (Lead Demonstrator)
  • CSC2025: Operating Systems
  • CSC3422: Concurrency
  • CSC8010: Computer Environments
  • CSC8311: Advanced Python
Research

I am currently looking at the role of metacognition (the idea of thinking about thinking or being aware of one's awareness) in computer science education. This has led me to conduct experiments that look at the confidence of students in our undergraduate program. By making our students aware of their own learning we can develop them into better learners; something that will develop them more than simply teaching them the material.  

I have attended numerous conferences nationally and internationally which has given me a good awareness of the research that is going on in this field. As well as attending conferences, I have been on the Programme Committee for UKICER 2019 and CEP 2020. 

Publications