Semester 1

Core module

• Software Measurement and Quality Assurance
• Personal and Group Skills - this can be taken in either Semester

Option modules

Choose two option modules (or choose three if you are going to take Personal and Group Skills in Semester 2) from:

• Computational Intelligence and Software Engineering
• Mobile and Web Applications
• Advanced C++ Programming
• Technology and Innovation Management
• Internet and Cloud Computing
• Interaction Design (ID) and User Experience (UX)
• Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing
• Operational Research

The modules listed reflect those currently available to students starting in the next intake and may differ from the modules available to current students. Every year, we review our modules and their content to ensure that our courses maintain the best academic and student experience possible. Whilst this does mean elements of your course may change in future academic years, it ensures your course is giving you a research-inspired education and preparing you for your future.

Semester 2

Core module

• Generative Development
• Service-Oriented Architectures
• Personal and Group Skills - this can be taken in either Semester

Option modules

Choose one option module (or choose two if you took Personal and Group Skills in Semester 1) from:

• Analysis and Design of Algorithms
• Big Data and Predictive Analytics
• Foundations of Cybersecurity
• Algorithms for Bioinformatics
• Service Design
• AI for Space
• Technology and Innovation Management
• Quantum Machine Learning

The modules listed reflect those currently available to students starting in the next intake and may differ from the modules available to current students. Every year, we review our modules and their content to ensure that our courses maintain the best academic and student experience possible. Whilst this does mean elements of your course may change in future academic years, it ensures your course is giving you a research-inspired education and preparing you for your future.

Industry Placement (optional)

The ‘With Industry’ variant of this degree gives you the opportunity to gain professional experience through an industrial placement as part of your Masters course. This is a work placement with an employer where you can apply your skills in a real-world setting.

Placement details

• Placements last between nine and eleven months and are normally paid, full-time roles with a formal contract between you and the employer.
• Placements begin after the taught part of your course finishes. After your placement has finished, you will return to the University to complete your dissertation or individual project.
• You will gain valuable industry experience, helping you develop key skills and enhance your career prospects.

Important information

Securing an industrial placement is very competitive. While the University will fully support you in your search for a placement, securing a placement is not guaranteed. You will be responsible for applying to, and securing, an opportunity.

You will receive support from:

• The Careers and Employability Service, which provides access to placement opportunities, job search strategies, CV and cover letter advice, and interview preparation.
• A dedicated Placement Tutor, who will guide you during your placement and help you reflect on the skills and experience gained.

Benefits of a ‘With Industry’ degree

By choosing this option, you will:

• Gain an understanding of working in a professional setting (industry, commercial, or non-commercial).
• Experience real-world business and technical challenges.
• Develop hands-on experience in project management and working to deadlines.
• Improve your employment prospects through essential transferable skills.
• Gain a clearer understanding of the career path you wish to pursue.

An Industrial Placement still incurs a tuition fee, but this is much lower than for a normal year at Leicester. You may also be eligible for financial support through Student Finance. See the Fees and Funding tab of this page for details.

The modules listed reflect those currently available to students starting in the next intake and may differ from the modules available to current students. Every year, we review our modules and their content to ensure that our courses maintain the best academic and student experience possible. Whilst this does mean elements of your course may change in future academic years, it ensures your course is giving you a research-inspired education and preparing you for your future.

Individual Project

Your course will conclude with an MSc Project (after your industry placement, if you have taken one). Using the experience gained during your course/placement, you will choose a challenging problem to work on and explore it by privately studying under the supervision of a member of the academic staff.

Please note: Students studying for a PGDip don't complete a project. Students taking the 'With Professional Practice' variant will do this instead of the Individual Project.

Recent MSc projects

Agile Software Development of an e-Commerce Web App Using the MEAN Stack

The MEAN stack, released in October 2014, is an open-source stack for developing dynamic web applications. Using this technology a full stack e-commerce website was implemented by using JavaScript as the sole implementation language. Important design goals were the optimisation of non-functional properties, such as availability (for example, by having quick request response times) and scalability (for example, by speeding up data queries while guaranteeing data consistency). An important component of the project relied on the application of agile practices, such as behaviour-driven development and domain-driven design, to refine the specification of functional features of the system by means of fast paced scrum sprints that deliver fully working system increments. Moreover, the MEAN stack was complemented with an end-to-end test framework for AngularJS in order to automate functional and acceptance testing. The end product was acquired by a local business.

Virtual Chat Assistant

Like any large organisation, our university has a wide range of information to help you through your studies. For example - teaching timetables, the rooms and telephone numbers of staff and the number of credits for the modules you will take. This project is to provide this information through a chat interface, as text chat is now a very common way for users to interact with their devices. The challenge of this project is to create an interface that interact with users in a natural way, and integrate with various data sources so that is can answer questions such as “Tell me where the next lecture on C++ is  going to be held”.

WSDL/BPEL to SRML Language Transformation

SRML is the Reference Modelling Language of the European project SENSORIA. It provides primitives for modelling and reasoning about business processes in a way that is independent of the languages used for executing them. This project developed a tool for generating SRML models from two specific industry standards: The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), which is used for specifying business process based on Web Services, and the Web Services Description Languages (WSDL) – an XML format for describing network services. The encoding provides the means to create high-level declarative descriptions of BPEL/WSDL specifications that can be used for building more complex business process models that can include components specified in other languages.

The modules listed reflect those currently available to students starting in the next intake and may differ from the modules available to current students. Every year, we review our modules and their content to ensure that our courses maintain the best academic and student experience possible. Whilst this does mean elements of your course may change in future academic years, it ensures your course is giving you a research-inspired education and preparing you for your future.

With Professional Practice (optional)

The modules listed reflect those currently available to students starting in the next intake and may differ from the modules available to current students. Every year, we review our modules and their content to ensure that our courses maintain the best academic and student experience possible. Whilst this does mean elements of your course may change in future academic years, it ensures your course is giving you a research-inspired education and preparing you for your future.