MSc Computing Science (Conversion)

The growth of the ICT industry has been identified as a top priority for the Northern Ireland Executive. According to Invest NI, Northern Ireland is the leading foreign direct investment region in Europe for software development and IT technical support centres. There are more than 900 companies in the ICT sector and many of these are international organisations.

The majority of new jobs have been in knowledge industries particularly ICT including software development, software testing and funds administration.

It is against this backdrop that we offer this course to graduates in subjects other than computing as an opportunity for career change, to enable them to exploit the opportunities for personal and professional development offered by this burgeoning sector.

The intensive one-year master’s conversion course is aimed at highly-motivated graduates with a good honours degree in any discipline with no more than 50% computing content. While the course has a particular focus on the employment needs of the local economy, the skills and abilities developed are easily transferred to a more global stage.

The overall aim of this course is to provide graduates equipped to apply best practice in software engineering to the development of a wide range of software systems in a variety of organisations. Skilled software developers are needed to support Northern Ireland’s burgeoning software industry.

Ulster University academics are actively involved in both research and teaching and this ensures that the developments accrued through research can feed into the teaching of students. A significant percentage of staff are members of the Higher Education Academy, and all staff are expected to have a Postgraduate Certificate in University Teaching or equivalent. All Computing courses are subject to periodic Faculty Review and University Revalidation.