Dr John Henry

My profile

Biography

Who am I?

I am a Senior Lecturer in Games and the Programme Leader for BSc Games Design at the Manchester Metropolitan University. The role involves teaching students across undergraduate and postgraduate courses on the concepts and technical process of games design and games development. As part of the role, I am researching the effectiveness of utilising games for mental and physical rehabilitation, the effectiveness of gamification in higher education, and the use of sensors in games-based solutions.

I am the Lead for the Games Science Lab, a group of researchers from the Department of Computing and Mathematics with a research focus on games, technology and human centred computing, applied across a wide area of disciplines, including healthcare, education and more.  I also lead the Serious Games for Health theme at the Manchester Games Centre.

Teaching

What do I teach?

Aside of being the Programme Leader for BSc Games Design, I am the unit leader for Industry and Community Engagement and The Craft of Game Development. I am happy to support students outside of these modules (e.g. for Final Year Projects) at the following:

  • Software Development
  • Web Development
  • Games Development
  • Serious Games Development*

*Serious Games refer to games of any nature (physical or computer) that aim to solve a real-world problem. Serious Games are entertaining and engaging, but differ in conventional games in their purpose.

Courses

Supervision

I supervise the following projects:

  • Final Year Projects for our undergraduate final year students
  • Synoptic Projects for our apprenticeship students on the Digital and Technology Solutions course
  • Masters students in the academic fields of Games for Good and the Internet of Things
  • A PhD student investigating the use of avatars in gamification for micro-teaching 

Research outputs

Eve, Z., Turner, M., Di Basilio, D., Harkin, B., Yates, A., Persson, S., Henry, J., Williams, A., Walton, G., Jones, M.V. and Whitley, C., 2024. Therapeutic games to reduce anxiety and depression in young people: A systematic review and exploratory meta‐analysis of their use and effectiveness. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy31(1), p.e2938.

Henry, J., Kendrick, C. and Arnab, S., 2023, August. Wearable technology as game input for active exergames. In 2023 IEEE 11th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.

Henry, J., Lloyd, H., Turner, M. and Kendrick, C., 2023. On the robustness of machine learning models for stress and anxiety recognition from heart activity signals. IEEE Sensors Journal.

Henry, J., Tang, S., Mukhopadhyay, S. and Yap, M.H., 2021. A randomised control trial for measuring student engagement through the Internet of Things and serious games. Internet of Things13, p.100332.

Cunningham, S., Henry, J. and Weinel, J., 2020. Augmenting virtual spaces: Affective feedback in computer games. Technology, Design and the Arts-Opportunities and Challenges, pp.229-247.

Henry, J., Tang, S., Hanneghan, M. and Carter, C., 2018, May. A framework for the integration of serious games and the Internet of Things (IoT). In 2018 IEEE 6th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.

Henry, J., Tang, S., Hannenghan, M. and Carter, C., 2017. A Measure of Student Engagement for Serious Games and IoT. In E-Learning and Games: 11th International Conference, Edutainment 2017, Bournemouth, UK, June 26–28, 2017, Revised Selected Papers 11 (pp. 262-270). Springer International Publishing.

Melthis, J., Tang, S., Yang, P., Hanneghan, M. and Carter, C., 2016. Topologies for combining the internet of things and serious games. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems31(5), pp.2685-2696.

Melthis, J., Brown, A., Tang, S. and Hanneghan, M., 2015, December. Using serious games to create awareness on visual impairments. In 2015 International conference on developments of E-systems engineering (DeSE) (pp. 165-170). IEEE.