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Staff Profile

Chris Napier

Visiting Fellow (Outreach into Schools Coordinator)

Background

In October 2023, I returned to the University on a voluntarily basis as a visiting member of staff to coordinate the School of Computing's Outreach Programme. This involves working with local schools to up skill students and teachers in Computer Science. When not in Computing, I work full-time on the UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry, setup to examine the UK's response to the pandemic.

In January 2021 I left the University to take on a full-time role in the Covid Response Unit at the Department for Education focusing on FE and HE.

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 studied my undergraduate degree at Newcastle and graduated my BSc in the summer of 2017. My undergraduate studies involved a lot of extracurricular activities such as founding the Newcastle University Computing and Technology Society (NUCATS) in October 2014 and 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

Since January 2021, I no longer teach on taught modules but run workshops for local schools and colleges.


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