Computing Science

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Jeff Pan

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

This course covers the techniques for creating sophisticated websites, emphasising architecture and design issues, and the provision of client-side and server-side dynamic content, with a particular focus on the use of XML.

Structure

2 one hour lectures and 1 two hour practical per week.

Assessment

1 2.5 hour examination (50%) and continuous assessment (50%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Bruce Scharlau

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

a) Java ME - client side; b) Java ME - server side; c) Bluetooth; d) Thin clients and widgets for mobiles; e) Location based services.

Structure

2 one hour lectures and 1 two hour practical per week.

Assessment

1 two-hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Wei Pang

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

• Data Mining: basic statistics, advanced data analysis techniques such as trend detectors, pattern detectors, qualitative models, basic data mining techniques such as classification and clustering.
• Visualization: information visualization (basic concepts, advanced techniques such as treemaps); supporting user variation (abilities, knowledge, preferences)
• Applications to real world problems: for example, medical decision support, supporting analysis of genome data.

Structure

2 one hour lectures and 1 two hour practical per week.

Assessment

1 two-hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Nigel BEacham

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

At the end of the course, students should be able to design and implement a complete database application, from the initial conceptual modelling stage to implementation with an SQL-based relational database system. They should have an overall appreciation of the internal organisation of a database system, and of the main tasks of a database administrator. They should also be able to build server-side support for Web-based persistent data applications. They should have a basic knowledge of the information retrieval techniques supporting search engines. And they should understand why the performance characteristics of search engines are very different from those of database systems.

Structure

2 one hour lectures and 1 two hour practicals per week.

Assessment

One two hour written examination paper (75%) and continuous assessment (25%)

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Nigel Beacham

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

At the end of the course, students should be able to analyse the requirements of a software system, design a system structure using leading edge design techniques, and devise strategies for testing and evaluating a software system. They should have developed a good knowledge of software engineering techniques and be ready to employ these techniques in later parts of the degree programme.

Structure

2 one hour lectures and 1 two hour practical per week.

Assessment

One two hour written examination paper (75%) and continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Frank Guerin

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

This course provides grounding in the field of e-commerce, e-health, e-science and e-governance, with case studies illustrating the infrastructures, models, and activities in various industrial and public sectors.

Structure

2 one hour lectures per week and 1 one hour tutorial.

Assessment

1 two and a half hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Wamberto Vasconcelos

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

• Introduction to peer-to-peer computing and motivation.
• Basic peer-to-peer algorithms and models: Centralised Directory, Flooded Request and Document Routing. Peer-to-peer topologies. Case studies.
• Peer-to-peer issues: Scalability, Anonymity/Privacy, Security, Performance, Reliability.
• Sample peer-to-peer technologies (e.g., Gnutella, Freenet and JXTA).
• Introduction to intelligent software agents and multi-agent systems. Motivations. Case studies.
• Basic concepts of software agents and multi-agent systems.
• Theories of agency, agent architectures and agent-oriented programming languages.
• Agent communication languages and protocols, including standards.
• Agent programming platforms.
• Negotiation and co-ordination mechanisms. Electronic institutions. Auctions and voting.
• Tuple spaces programming for agent communication and coordination.
• Distributed problem-solving.

Structure

2 one hour lectures and 1 two hour practical per week.

Assessment

1 two-hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Prof George Coghill

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

A selection of topics spanning a range off Computational Intelligence approaches under the following headings:
- Fuzzy systems (e.g. Fuzzy Logice, Fuzzy Rule Bases, Mamdani Methods)
- Model-based technology (e.g. Qualitative and Fuzzy Qualitative reasoning, model-based diagnosis)
- Nature Inspired Computing (e.g. Neural Nets Artificial Immune Systems, Partcile Swarm optimisation methods. This will include a rudimentary presentation of the basic biological principles involved).

Structure

2 one hour lectures per week, 11 hours of practicals over 12 weeks.

Assessment

1 two hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Advaith Siddharthan

Pre-requisites

An undergraduate degree or equivalent qualification.

Notes

Overview

- Adaptive Hypermedia.
- User modelling.
- Recommender systems (e.g. content-based and collaborative filtering).
- Group modelling.
- Affective and persuasive computing.
- Application domains (e.g. personalised news, personalised e-learning, personalised digital tv, personalised e-commerce, personalisation in health-care).
- Usability aspects of adaptive systems (scrutability, believability, privacy).
- Designing and evaluating adaptive systems.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures and 1 two-hour supervised practical per week.

Assessment

1 two-hour written examination (75%), and continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Bruce Scharlau

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The course covers concepts, methods, and tools currently adopted in the software sector to manage projects. As such, it provides a thorough and wide introduction to all those relevant aspects of software project management that will be more specifically addressed in the other courses that are part of the programme.

Introduction to Software Project Management: What is Software Project Management? Software Project Management and the Software Development Life Cycle; Statistics
Teams and Scheduling: Project Teams; Success factors; Introduction to scheduling.
Measuring Risk: Introduction to Accounting; Risks and risk management; Evaluating Projects; Risk quantification methods.

Specifying and Doing the Project to Standards: Introduction to Project Planning and Control; Operate and look back; The Application in Production; Software Project Management Standards - PMBOK, ISO 10006, BS 6079, PRINCE2.

Structure

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

To be confirmed

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The course covers existing leading-edge industrial-strength and research-based software technologies that can provide a leading edge to software products if used in their development process. It provides concepts and methodological tools to understand and assess the impact of the transfer process that leads to the introduction and to the usage of innovative technologies in commercial software applications. The course also focuses on how to reverse engineer existing software and on how to protect commercial software products from easy reverse engineering.
Commercial technologies in context: Programming technologies: languages, tools, and development paradigms; Web and mobile technologies; Database, data analysis, and information management technologies; Security technologies.

Research technologies in context: Knowledge technologies; Multi-agents and distributed computing; Graphics and image processing; Domotics and robotics: software with sensors and actuators.
Software development paradigms A to Z from an industrial perspective: The waterfall approach: where NOT to use it; Prototyping and spiralling out of control; The Unified Process: does one size fits all? Agile approaches: downsize the process, small is beautiful

The knowledge transfer process: Assessing software technologies and their suitability; Technology-centred risk analysis; Developing with quality and standards in mind; Reengineering prototypes for industrial-strength products.

Intelligence and counterintelligence: Reverse engineering existing software; Protecting your own software against reverse engineering; Wondertechnologies: how to identify and how to avoid them.

Structure

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr A Siddharthan

Pre-requisites

Undergraduate degree in Computing or comparable experience.

Overview

Formal linguistic models of English: word categories, sentence constituents, phrase-structure grammar rules, features. Modelling syntactic phenomena.
Parsing: shift-reduce parsers, chart parsers, handling ambiguity, definite clause grammars.
Semantics and pragmatics: meaning representations, reference, speech acts.
Generation: content determination, sentence planning, and realisation.
Applications: grammar checking, machine translation, database interfaces, report generation, dictation.
Speech: hidden Markov models, statistical language models, speech synthesis.

Structure

Two one-hour lectures per week; one two-hour practical per week.

Assessment

1 two hour written examination (75%) and continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Advaith Siddharthan

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

- Concepts of randomness, redundancy, compressibility, noise, bandwith, uncertainty and entropy and their relation to information.
- Term and inverse document frequencies, stemming and realted techniques for automatic indexing.
- Link analysis algorithms such as Pagerank and HITS.
- Vector space models, dimentionality reduction.
- Current topics including Question Answering, Summarisation and Information Extraction.

Structure

1x one-hour lectures and 1 two-hour practical/tutorial per week.

Assessment

1 two-hour written examination (75%); continuouss assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Nigel Beacham

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The concepts of a database and database management. Database development. Illustrations. Entity-Relationship model. Database design: logical design and the relational model. Normalisation; different normal forms. Physical design; file organisation and access; indexing. Database administration. Query by Example and SQL. Query optimisation. Practical examples using MS Access.
Client-server model. Database servers. Database access from client applications. Web-based database access through server-side scripting. Practical examples using MS Access, My SQL, Php and JDBC.
A brief overview of key concepts in distributed, object -oriented, multimedia, spatial and geo-referenced database systems.

Structure

Assessment

1 two-hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Nigel Beacham

Pre-requisites

An undergraduate degree or equivalent qualification.

Notes

Overview

Introduction:
Systems within organisations. Different kinds of systems serving different purposes. The need for systems analysis and design. The systems development life cycle. Prototyping.

Project management issues:
Project planning, team organisation, software measurement and metrics, cost estimation, feasibility studies, risk analysis.

Systems analysis and design - requirements elicitation, interviewing, system modelling, functional vs. non-functional requirements, developing a system specification, object libraries, design patterns.

Unified Modelling Language (UML) and comparison with structured methods (e.g. SSADM).

Computer-aided software engineering.

Software testing - testing strategies and methods, quality assurance and management, verification and validation.

Structure

This course will be delivered independently through webCT, but students will be given the option of attending two one-hour lectures and one two-hour practical session each week.

Assessment

One two-hour written examination paper (75%) and continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Ernesto Compatangelo

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

Students will be required to undertake as a small group a significant software management project that is related to the taught material and which is relevant with respect to their current position in the IT sector. Guidance will be provided during the whole project to support and optimise their effort.

Structure

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

5

Course Coordinator

Dr Bruce Scharlau

Pre-requisites

None

Overview

Reading and discussion of suitable texts on cloud computing.

Structure

12 one hour seminars.

Assessment

Written coursework including extended report/essay.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr B Scharlau

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

This course delivers a thorough understanding of enterprise programming models and techniques for distributed systems, including a comparative analysis of the major industry platforms.

Structure

2 one hour lectures and 1 two hour practicals per week.

Assessment

100% continuous assessment.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Frank Guerin

Pre-requisites

An undergraduate degree at 2.2 or better or equivalent qualification

Notes

1. Assistive technologies may be required for any student who is unable to use a standard keyboard/mouse/computer monitor. Any students wishing to discuss this further should contact the School Disability Co-ordinator.


2. To be taken as part of the MSc/PGDIP in Information Technology (DL)
Overview

Syllabus
What is the electonic society? What are the human factors involved in engaging in the electronic society? What is the impact of the electronic society on organisations? What impact do E-Technologies have on society? An overview of infrastructure. An introduction to issues: Legal & Ethical, security, privacy, intellectual property, software failure, digital divide. Case studies from E-Commerce, E-Health, E-Science and E-Governance. These case studies will address, for example, how organisations must change to best utilise emerging technologies, issues of security and privacy in the use of patient data, and the importance of standards in E-Science.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures and 1 two-hour practical per week.
Lectures will be recorded and slides+video will be available online.
The expectation is for the students to do the practicals in their own time and use MyAberdeen functions for discussions and guidance from the cooridnator.
Where there is an expectation of group work, this will be facilitated by the course organiser.

Assessment

1 two hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%), which will follow the same format as the on-campus version.

Credit Points

60

Course Coordinator

Dr A Siddharthan

Pre-requisites

Undergraduate degree at 2.2 or above or equivalent qualification. Successful completion of PGDip component (8 taught courses) of the proposed MSc IT/PGDip (DL) programme.

Notes

1. Assistive technologies may be required for any student who is unable to use a standard keyboard/mouse/computer monitor. Any students wishing to discuss this further should contact the School Disability Co-ordinator.


2. To be taken as part of the MSc/PGDIP in Information Technology (DL)
Overview

The students will develop a suitable software project in groups to solve the needs of a client organisation, as for the on-campus version of this course. Where necessary, this will be adapted to DL circumstances (e.g. contact with clients through Skype or similar)

Structure

Following 6-10 hours of introductory reading materials and exercises in the two weeks (slides, reading materials and where possible video will be available online), there follow fortnightly supervisory meetings for the students, organised through skype or similar.

Assessment

100% continuous assessment, which will follow the same format as the on-campus version.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr Bruce Scharlau

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The initial week teaches the students about agile and lean development while developing their team ideas and follows this up with work to develop their two different team ideas the rest of the term. While developing their application they also apply service design elements to ensure it meets the needs of their customers. As each product the teams will develop will differ, they will all understand how the general principles of agile and lean software development apply to their context, while also understanding the general ideas of service design and its specific application to their context.

Structure

2 supervision meetings of one hour per week, plus 1 two-hour practical session per week.

Assessment

Continuous assessment: reports on group activities (50%); 2500 word individual reflective essay (50%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr Bruce Scharlau

Pre-requisites

Agile Digital Product Development.

Overview

The initial week sees the students guiding beginning students on agile and lean development while developing their two different team ideas. This is followed up with a focus on knowing that the team is developing the 'right feature at the right time' at a high level of quality so that the team can pivot easily if/when they need to as they learn more about their customers. The teams will also focus on both continuous integration of their software, and continuous improvement of their own processes so that they steadily improve their working habits as well as their software development process.

As each product the teams develop will differ, they will all understand how the general principles of agile and lean software development apply to their context, while also understanding the general ideas of service design and its specific application to their context.

Structure

2 one-hour supervision meetings per week, plus 1 two-hour practical session per week.

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%): a mixture of written reports, and software applications, of which 50% is based on group activities developing the software artefacts of their teams, and 50% is based on individual reflective work on the form of a 2500 word long essay.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Bruce Scharlau

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

This course covers two different themes. On the one hand, it covers customer development process for all startup products. On the other hand, the students create the content based around weekly discussion sessions and independent study covering product development, business development and other relevant issues to the organising of their business product.

Structure

12 two-hour seminars.

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%): a protfolio of work containing at least four pieces of relevant work reflecting on understanding of the materials covered in the course. These might be essays, multimedia presentations, or other suitable components that illustrate understanding of the work.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Bruce Scharlau

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The course explores service design and design thinking to see how they can bring innovation to business. This is done through a 'learning by doing' approach where student teams iteratively 'discover, define, develop and deploy' potential solutions to problems in a typical design process.

Structure

12 two-hour seminars.

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%): a portfolio of materials that might include a mixture of customer experience journey, service design blueprints, empathy maps and other artifacts, which are submitted along with a group report of the development of their idea over the term and a number of 500 word individual reflective submissions. 50% of the mark is based on group activities and 50% is based on individual work.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor Chris Mellish

Pre-requisites

N/A

Notes

Overview

The course provides an introduction to the issues surrounding human-computer interaction. It addresses the topic from a number of perspectives: as an instance of human information-processing; as a user-centred design problem; and as a standards / guidelines led process. Considerable emphasis is placed on the importance of evaluation of user-interface designs and implementations. The role of technical documentation as part of the human-computer interface is discussed and students given the opportunity to develop those skills. Multimedia technology is studied as an example of advanced HCI.

Structure

2 one hour lectures and 1 two hour practicals per week.

Assessment

One 2 hour written examination paper (75%) and continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Nigel Beacham

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The design of Web sites is discussed and students are given opportunities to critique existing Web sites and design their own sites. The course will cover the following technologies: XHTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Structure

2 one hour lectures and 1 three hour practical per week.

Assessment

1 two hour exam (75%) and continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr B. Scharlau

Pre-requisites

An undergraduate degree or equivalent qualification.

Notes

Overview

a) principles of business computing including customer relationship management, supply chain management, data warehousing and online analytical processing, enterprise resource planning and business information systems
b)security issues in computing including authentication, cryptography, secure signatures and threat analysis.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures and 1 two-hour practical per week.

Assessment

1 two-hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Ernesto Compatangelo

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The course delivers practical experience in the technical issues involved in creating an effective showcasing proof of concept for a real product in the wider software sector. It builds on top of the CS5567 module, where students have devised a business plan for a company centred around such product.
On the final day of the module, an Industrial Assessment Group will come to look at your business proposal and give you feedback. They are playing the role of venture capitalists, your aim is to show them that your business idea is viable and would be worth funding.

Structure

1 one hour practical.

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Ernesto Compatangelo

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

This course, delivered in collaboration with the School of Law, covers essential business strategy and associated legal issues in e-commerce

Structure

1 two hour lecture and 21 hours of practicals.

Assessment

1 two hour written examination (50%), continuous assessment (35%), and oral presentation (15%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Bruce Scharlau

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The course covers methods and techniques currently adopted in the software sector to devise and analyse software project plans and to control their. Industry standard software tools will be extensively used throughout the course.

Software project planning: staffing and task allocation; organisational process; cost & effort estimates and schedule; software project metrics; risk analysis; software project planning tools.
Software project control: information gathering and progress analysis; cost & resource monitoring; earned value analysis; performance, process and product quality assessment; change management and rescheduling.

Software project planning and control standards: UK, EU, and US software project documentation standards; the PRINCE2 method.

Structure

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Ernesto Compatangelo

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The course covers existing approaches to total quality in the software sector by focusing on the dichotomy between the software development process and the software as a product. It provides concepts and methodological tools to understand and to measure both aspects of quality, explicitly looking at current approaches aiming at improving the process and at minimising ‘bugs’ of different nature.

Defining quality in the development process and in the developed product: Software verification: building the system right; Software validation: building the right system; Software Quality Analysis: reviewing the development process and its product.

Software Verification & Validation – controlling quality through testing: Static testing: reviews; Dynamic testing; User acceptance and usability testing.

Continuous development process quality improvement: Understanding the organisational process maturity level; Waste in the software development organisation; The six-step software development process improvement model and its application.

Post-Performance Analysis: Post-Performance Analysis purpose, focus, and outcomes; Preparing for Post-Performance Analysis; Performing Post-Performance Analysis.

Software Quality Assurance: Building the Software Quality Assurance Plan; Ensuring the Software Quality Assurance Plan completeness, testability, and usability; Auditing and reviewing.

Structure

Assessment

1 two-hour written examination (60%); continuous assessment (40%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr Ernesto Compatangelo

Pre-requisites

Having passed all first and second year programme modules.

Overview

Students will be required to undertake individually a significant software management project that is related to the taught material and which is relevant with respect to their current position in the IT sector. Guidance will be provided during the whole project to support and optimise their effort.

The project is an independent artefact based on a topic of the student's own choice. Students are encouraged to focus their project on a relevant problem identified within their own organisation and to demonstrate how software project management concepts, skills, and techniques they have acquired so far can be put into practice.

Structure

Supervision is arranged at the institution of the students with their own appointed supervisor. The engagement of a workplace mentor is strongly recommended.

Assessment

Written dissertation (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Ernesto Compatangelo

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The course covers specific topics currently used in the software sector to manage a range of products that are characterised by a shorter lifespan, a proness to faults (bugs), a high requirements volatility, and a substantial rate of change along the development process.

Putting Software Portfolio Management in Context: The notion of Software Portfolio Management (SWPFM); Why do executives need SWPFM; The benefit of using a SWPFM system; Why is SWPFM necessary?

The Software Portfolio Management process: Negotiation and communication in The SWPFM process; Project business case & SWPFM cost-benefit analysis; Programme management & organisational change.

Programme management and its contributing aspects: Programme organisation and leadership; Benefits management; Stakeholder management; Risk management; Issue resolution; Change control; Configuration management.

Strategic programme planning, control, and management: Programme planning and control; Business case management; Quality management; Programme processes; Defining a programme.

Structure

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Nigel Beacham

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The design of Web sites is discussed and students are given opportunities to critique existing Web sites and design their own sites. The course will cover the following technologies: XHTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Structure

Assessment

1 two-hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%).

Credit Points

25

Course Coordinator

Prof George Coghill

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

- The topic for research may be self proposed by the student, or the student may take a topic suggested by an academic member of staff.
- Topics will be related to the area of the MSc dissertation and gaps in the students' knowledge. (some sample topics: Argumentation theory, Personalization, Machine Learning, Logic, Game Theory, Generating referring expressions.)
- Hoe to analyse and specify gaps in knowledge.
- Independent study skills (how to use textbooks, internet, papers, colleagues; what level of detail to study at; time management)
- Reviewing materials, including scientific papers, technical documentation, and marketing materials about related products and services.
- Communicating knowledge to a general computer science audience.

Structure

One one-hour lecture. Two one hour meetings with academic supervisor at the start of the course to draw up a plan for independent study. One hour meeting with academic supervisor per week, in which students discuss their progress and problems. Students will spend about 30 hours a week on independent study.

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%). Students will produce a dissertation about the topics they studied in the course, and the systems studied and critically analysed. Marking will be done by an expert in the area of their dissertation, moderated by the course organiser.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Ernesto Compatangelo

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

The course covers specific business and legal concepts currently used in the software sector to devise commercial contracts, licences, and development agreements. As such, it provides a thorough and wide introduction to the matter, allowing students to understand the wider commercial and legal regulatory framework that underpins legally binding agreements in the ICT area.

Introduction to commercial issues in the software sector: Cluster development theory; The competitive edge in industrialised countries; Analysis of the IT sector, its structure, its contributing components, its future challenges; Hi-tech IT and software businesses; Corporate strategy and Business strategy.

Contract issues: Legal form underpinning business transactions; Avoiding legal uncertainty; Key elements of contract ; Duty of care; Contractual and delictual liability; Specific issues involving IT, Computers and IP Rights; Specific issues in e-contract; Licensing; Liability for information content.

Trademark, domain, and data protection: How to protect trademarks; How to protect domain names under trademark law; Copyright protection of data repositories; Database rights; Is protection of databases anti-competitive?

Patenting vs copyrighting in the IT sector: Patenting innovation; Copyright protection for computer software.

Structure

Assessment

1 two-hour written examination (60%); continuous assessment (40%).

Credit Points

Course Coordinator

Prof Chris Mellish

Pre-requisites

An undergraduate degree at 2.2 or better, or equivalent qualification

Notes

1. Assistive technologies may be required for any student who is unable to use a standard keyboard/mouse/computer monitor. Any students wishing to discuss this further should contact the School Disability Co-ordinator.


2. To be taken as part of the MSc/PGDIP in Information Technology (DL)
Overview

Syllabus

Principles of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI): metaphors and conceptual models; user models; human information processing; ergonomics; user-centered design and evaluation methodologies; HCI guidelines and standards. Input/output modes and devices; interaction styles. Users with special needs. Internationalisation. Evaluation techniques - walkthroughs, heuristic evaluation, expert reviews, controlled experiments. Design of safety - critial systems.

Technical Writing & Documentation: help systems; writing tutorials; user manuals and reference material.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures and 1 two-hour practical per week.
Lectures will be recorded and slides=video will be available online.
The expectation is for the students to do the practicals in their own time and use MyAberdeen functions for discussions and guidance from the coordinator.
Where there is an expectation of group work, this will be facilitated by the course organiser.

Assessment

1 two hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%), which will follow the same format as the on-campus version.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr B Scharlau

Pre-requisites

An undergaduate degree at 2.2 or better or equivalent qualification

Notes

,
1. Assistive technologies may be required for any student who is unable to use a standard keyboard/mouse/computer monitor. Any students wishing to discuss this further should contact the School Disability Co-ordinator.


2. To be taken as part of the MSc/PGDip in Information Technology (DL)

Overview

Syllabus:

1. principles of business computing including customer relationship management, supply chain mamagement, data warehousing and online analytical processing, enterprise resource planning and business information systems


2. business models for enterprises

Structure

2 one-hour lectures and 1 two-hour practical per week.
Lectures will be recorded and slides+video will be available online.
The expectation is for the students to do the practicals in their own time and use MyAberdeen funcions for discussions and guidance from the coordinator.
Where there is an expectation of group work, this will be facilitated by the course organiser.

Assessment

1 two hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%), which will follow the same format as the on-campus version.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr Bruce Scharlau

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

Students need to understand their personal development goals and develop plans to achieve these alongside what can often be team focused activities. This course provides space and time to reflect on individual goals, and to develop plans to achieve those.

Structure

12 one-hour seminars.

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%): a portfolio of work containing at least four pieces of work reflecting their understanding of the materials covered in the course. These might be essays, multimedia presentations, or other suitable components that illustrate their understanding of their own personal development plans and goals with the degree.

Credit Points

60

Course Coordinator

Dr A Siddharthan

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

To develop the students' creative, analytical, practical and presentational skills. To allow the students to consolidate material learnt earlier in the programme, to extend their skills, and to research new areas.

Structure

Assessment

95% Project, 5% presentation.

Credit Points

60

Course Coordinator

Dr Wei Pang

Pre-requisites

N/A

Overview

To develop the students' creative, analytical, practical and presentational skills. To allow the students to consolidate material learnt earlier in the programme, to extend their skills, and to research new areas.

Structure

Assessment

Continuous assessment (100%).