Mark’s research focuses on computing education, industry engagement and the student experience. His principal area of work is the development of a framework for industry partnership engagement, supporting computing projects that deliver mutual benefits for students and industry partners.
His wider research interests include requirements engineering, problem domain knowledge extraction, object-oriented analysis and design, interface evaluation and usability testing, and support strategies for dyslexic computer users.
Research and educational development projects
- Industry partnerships and employability: Developing a framework for computing industry partnerships and investigating the impact of industry challenge events on student development, employability and graduate destinations.
- Inclusive computing: Investigating support strategies for dyslexic computer users, including the evaluation of the DUIST framework.
- Student engagement: Exploring approaches to improve engagement in challenging computing disciplines, including discrete mathematics.
- Role-play in software engineering education: Investigating the use of simulated client interviews and role-play to teach requirements engineering, formal specification and requirements elicitation.
- Belonging and student support: Exploring approaches to strengthen students’ sense of belonging in higher education and evaluating interventions to support engagement and learning.
- Teaching quality in computing: Investigating approaches to enhance teaching quality, including ability grouping in web development and the use of student feedback to inform improvements.
- Alumni engagement and graduate success: Developing the Graduate Success Platform to explore the impact of alumni engagement on current students, track graduate career development, and evaluate the use of authentic graduate success stories in course promotion and marketing.
