Dr Mark Johnson

Dr Mark Johnson is the Programme Leader of the Software Engineering course at the University of Northampton (UoN). He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He has more than 25 years of experience as a software engineer and as an academic. Dr Johnson has a significant research interest in pedagogic research within Computing and has worked with several commercial organisations (including Barclaycard, Triad Group PLC and KPMG) exploring the viability of student engagement with industry as an essential embedded component of undergraduate course provision. As an academic has supported the development of over 20 computing course programmes (at Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels) during his 24 years in higher education. He is also a consultant at Nyx Technologies Ltd and works on a variety of contemporary software and hardware-based projects. He received his PhD from the University of Northampton in 2007. 

Research interests include problem domain knowledge extraction, requirements engineering, approaches to object-oriented analysis/design, interface evaluation/usability testing and pedagogic research within computing.

Current Research Projects

• An investigation into alternative approaches to stimulate student engagement in traditionally unpopular/difficult computer disciplines such as programming and mathematics.
• A study into the use of role-play as a valuable teaching aid for students studying requirements engineering, formal specification of software systems and elicitation techniques in higher education.
• An investigation into the impact of University Society membership on student academic and career success.
• An exploration of the efficacy of streaming students by ability and subject knowledge in an HE setting.
• A study into the effectiveness of industry-embedded teaching/work experience on student academic attainment and career prospects.
• An investigation into online teaching performance enhancement strategies.

At present, the tutor involved is supervising 3 PhD students with a variety of project topic areas including, the developing quality software, teaching and learning and gamification applications within education.

Ahmed Janabi; Computing

Intrusion Detection System (IDS) In Software-Defined Network (SDN)

Alex Dziubek; Computing

Enhancing Computing Education with UK Schools.

Chris Rafferty; Computing

The use of course-embedded gamification techniques to enhance student progression, academic achievement and student evaluation results.

Recently completed

James Oakes; Computing

Intelligent Management of Virtualised Computer Based Workloads and Systems.

Thomas Butler; Computing

Creating a metric to measure software flexibility in Object-Oriented Programming.

Undergraduate Level:

• CSY1064 Software Engineering Fundamentals
• CSY2027 Software Engineering Group Project
• CSY3013 Software Engineering 3