Description of Core Courses
CI6101 Information Architecture
Key concepts related to information discovery and methods of navigation and searching on Web sites; Information architecture as an approach for site development and organisation (involving knowledge from multiplicity of fields). Tools, techniques and processes needed to build and maintain the architecture. Issues related to site design and interface, contents and context, and users and usability. Forms of discourse and text structure suitable to the Web environment. Information organisation: metadata, controlled vocabularies, classification schemes, knowledge maps, and taxonomies. Description and indexing of WWW resources.
CI6102 Object-Oriented Information Systems
Overview of the software development life cycle; software process models; traditional software engineering methods. Requirements analysis and systems specification; Fundamentals of object-oriented programming: encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism. Object-oriented analysis and design concepts and techniques including use of the Unified Modeling Language (UML); Design patterns and object-oriented frameworks; Software testing.
CI6103 Professional Seminar
Series of seminars will be conducted to provide an overview of the areas related to the field of information systems. Speakers will be drawn from academia, industry and professional organisations. Methods and approaches to research and development suitable in the area of information systems will be covered and case studies of implementation of information systems from industry and academia will be shared.
Description of Group 'A' Elective Courses
CI6111 Internet Programming
Internet communication protocols such as TCP/IP, FTP, SMTP and HTTP; Basic networking concepts; Advanced Web page development with Dynamic HTML, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets; Server-side development technologies such as Perl, PHP, ASP, Java servlets and JSP; Socket programming; Security issues including threat identification, security strategies, encryption and authentication.
CI6112 Human Computer Interaction - Users, Tasks and Designs
Introduction to general design and usability issues; Psychology of design of everyday things; Key cognitive and physical human capabilities and their relations to design of usable and useful systems; Users: personas, human factors and human diversity; Tasks: goals, scenarios; Design: general established design heuristics and guidelines; International design heuristics and guidelines from three perspectives: cultural, ethical and legal; Relate design and usability methods to the wider systems development process.
CI6113 Software Project Management
Project management concepts; Project definition; Project planning: quality, time and cost dimensions; Project communication and documentation; Project implementation and control; Project completion; Project management information systems; Software tools; Project team: roles, responsibility and authority; Performance evaluation; Organisational behavioural skills for project management; Best practices; Case studies in project management.
CI6114 Database Systems
Overview of database models: relational and object-oriented database models; Relational database design: data modelling using the Entity-Relationship diagram and normalisation of relational tables; Database definition and manipulation: SQL and Query By Example; Managing database environments: database administration, transaction processing, concurrency control, client-server processing, and security. Web-based database applications developments using Web development tools.
Description of Group 'B' Elective Courses
CI6121 Distributed Internet Applications
Issues related to the design and implementation of large-scale Web-based information systems; XML processing with XSL, Document Object Model, and related APIs and technologies; Enterprise component technologies such as EJB, CORBA and Microsoft .NET; Web services: architecture, protocols, tools and languages; Web server administration: installation, maintenance, performance tuning, and log analysis.
CI6122 Multimedia Systems Development
Introduction to multimedia, hypertext, hypermedia and their applications; Multimedia basics: text, graphics, animation, audio, video and file formats; Compression techniques in images, audio and video content; Multimedia standards; Multimedia development tools, technologies and languages; Development for standalone and Web-based multimedia information systems; Media rights management; Distributed multimedia; Technologies and techniques for multimedia content management.
CI6123 Mobile Applications Development
Data communications and networking concepts: network topologies, LANs, WANs, switching techniques, OSI model, and TCP/IP protocols; Wireless networking: cellular wireless networks, mobile IP, IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN and Bluetooth; Mobile device applications development: J2ME, mobile information device profile (MIDP) and connected limited device configuration (CLDC); WAP, WML and WMLScript; Location-based wireless applications: GPS and network-based positioning techniques.
CI6124 Data Mining and Machine Learning
The knowledge discovery process; data preparation; Supervised and unsupervised learning. Machine learning: decision tree induction, rule induction, nearest neighbour categorisation, cluster analysis, Bayesian learning and neural networks; Web mining: content, structure and usage mining; Information mining software and tools; Recommender systems and intelligent information retrieval; spiders; semantic Web; information agents and brokers.
CI6125 Enterprise Portals and Digital Libraries
Introduction to information and knowledge portals: types and examples; Introduction to digital libraries: theoretical and historical foundations, Infrastructure for digital libraries; Information retrieval and distributed information discovery; Access management and security; Application development models; Users and usability: human information behaviour, research models, user interfaces; Digital preservation and digitisation; Social, economic, policy, cultural and ethical issues and challenges and trends.
CI6126 Information Retrieval Systems
The study of the representation, storage, and access to very large digital document collections; Data structures and algorithms for compressing, indexing, and querying large digital collections: Huffman coding, inverted file indexing, Boolean query processing, ranked query processing, and document similarity measures; Techniques for the evaluation of information retrieval systems; Development of multimedia information applications.
CI6127 Distributed Database Systems
Overview of distributed database systems: the relational database model, computer networks, and distributed DBMS architecture. Distributed database design and manipulation: distributed data modeling, normalisation, physical database design, database definition, and query processing. Managing distributed database environments: multiple database administration, transaction processing, concurrency control, security, backup, failure recovery, and high-availability solutions. Data warehouses, object-based databases, and XML databases. Distributed database application development using software development tools.
CI6128 Usability Engineering
Introduction to a range of user-centred tools, methods and techniques for building usable and useful systems complementing other software development approaches; Creative design aids: requirements analysis, scenario-based design, claims analysis, statecharts; Usability evaluation aids: usability inspection methods – heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough; analytic evaluation methods – GOMS and keystroke level analysis; experimental evaluation methods: qualitative and quantitative methods.
CI6129 Information Visualisation
The study of concepts, models and examples for improved information visualisation; Rearrangement and interaction: affordances, table lens, mosaic displays, network data, algorithms; Representation and interpretation data: quantitative, ordinal and categorical data; Dynamic exploration: dynamic queries, attribute explorer, neighbourhood explorer, model maker; Connectivity: graph theory, general networks, tree structures; Document visualisation: TileBars, galaxies, themescapes, galaxy of news, Kohonen maps.
CI6130 Management of Information Systems and Services
Principles, theories, and practices of management in relation to information enterprises; Defining mission, goals, and objectives; Organisational structure and authority; directing, controlling, decision making; delegation, motivation and leadership; Role of IS personnel; Measuring and evaluating; Critical thinking and problem-solving; Project management; Entrepreneurship.
CI6131 Software Performance Analysis
Software test process and principles: planning, specification, execution, checking, recording and completion; Test techniques: Functional, structural and non-functional testing techniques, static and dynamic analysis, non-systematic testing techniques; Software Reviews; Computer-aided software testing tools; Test management; Risk management; Disaster recovery; Best practices; Case studies in software performance analysis and evaluation.
CI6191-4 Special Topic 1-4
Subjects in special areas of the Information Systems field not covered in the above list may be offered occasionally according to the special interests of staff members and visiting staff.
CI6199 Critical Inquiry in Information Systems
Overview of how to design and conduct research projects in the area of information systems. Research study design, preparation of proposals and manuscripts, intellectual property and ethics. Introduction to the main types of research methods, with a more in-depth examination of a few useful methods, to address information systems problems.
Description of Dissertation
Information Systems Research Project
Harnessing the knowledge, skills and attitudes acquired in the programme and applying them to solve information systems-related research problems, create new knowledge or develop new information system products or services is an essential part of the programme. In this respect, each student is mentored by a staff member in an in information systems research project leading to a dissertation of up to 15,000 words. The project can be in any information systems area. |
