Dialogue with industry keeps DCU courses relevant
Dialogue with industry keeps DCU courses relevant
One of the benefits of close industry engagement with universities is that students get to learn from current real-world examples, and DCU’s M.Sc. in Computing is a case in point, says course director Renaat Verbruggen.
DCU’s School of Computing has an industrial advisory board that collaborates on developing course content across the entire school. Verbruggen believes this approach ensures the courses don’t exist in a vacuum but stay fresh, as they’re informed by the latest developments. “By keeping up a dialogue with industry, it keeps the M.Sc. relevant. For example, the network security module is currently taught by one of the chief researchers from Symantec in Dublin, and that means he’s talking about what is current,” he says.
Another example is the Data Analytics option in the Master's programme, which was launched two years ago. Data analytics is an increasingly important part of modern business practice, as organisations ranging from sports teams to public administrations and businesses of all sizes look to gain competitive advantage or improve their knowledge and decision making capability by analysing the information they hold in a more rigorous way.
The course came about through joint input from IBM and DCU and aims to equip students with IT skills to operate as data scientists. Their studies will allow them to uncover trends in a variety of settings, from urban analysis in cities to consumer behaviour, social networks, sentiment analysis, healthcare, and cyber and network security.
The course material includes exclusive resources such as access to real-world IBM case studies from cities and organisations around the world. “IBM have been incredibly supportive,” Verbruggen says. “They put in a lot of work with us into the design of the course, and one of their research scientists delivers the machine learning module on the course. It is significant that they can provide us with a research scientist for a full module.”
The two organisations are also collaborating on research projects, and IBM contributes ideas for the practicum, which is an experiment or project that all M.Sc. students take as part of their course. In a neat symbiosis, some of IBM’s own staff in Dublin are taking two-year part-time option for the Master's in Data Analytics, which was created to allow people in the workplace to further their skills.
Verbruggen says the Insight Centre for Data Analytics is another example of this industry engagement with third-level research. A joint initiative between DCU, NUI Galway, UCC, UCD and other partners, Insight is a research centre allied to DCU’s School of Computing and has links with technology giants such as Google and Microsoft.
The next module planned for the M.Sc. in Computing will cover another growing area, human language technology. It is being developed using a similar model of industry engagement with the ADAPT Research Centre at DCU.