Make the world your workplace by becoming an all-rounder in IT.
As a future Information Technology professional, you are eager to learn, solution-oriented, creative and you understand the needs of employers and customers. You are also interested in programming and security. To complete this programme, you need to be both independent and a real team player.
The four-year Information Technology degree is combines theory with practice. You will immediately collaborate with companies from the field. Below you can read how the four years are structured.
The Computer Science programme features a wide range of subjects, taught by lecturers with various areas of expertise such as software development, interaction design, network technology and big data as well as communication and research skills. We aim to ensure that our education ties in closely with professional practice, allowing you to build a solid foundation for all kinds of roles in the ICT sector.
As we prioritise personal attention and individual supervision, it is not surprising that students regard the involvement and helpfulness of the lecturers as one of the best aspects of the degree programme.
Phases
The programme is divided into three phases: the first-year phase, the core phase and the graduation phase. During the first year, you will lay the foundations for your development as a computer scientist. In the core phase (second year and first half of the third year), you will be faced with complex tasks. You will conclude the core phase with a professional orientation work placement in the third year. In the second half of the third and first half of the fourth year, you will choose from various elective modules. The language of instruction in the elective modules is English. To conclude your studies, you will carry out an individual graduation project at a company or organisation in which you conduct practice-oriented research and develop an ICT product.
Terms
A year is divided into four terms in which education is structured according to themes from professional ICT practices. The lessons and educational activities in a particular term relates to a specific theme, e.g. web design or system design. The theme usually involves a project assignment.
Teaching methods
This is how you receive education:
• You attend lectures and seminars and take part in practical sessions.
• You attend lectures by guest lecturers and participate in excursions.
• You participate in a work placement.
• You take part in projects which involve working in a team with fellow students, tackling a concrete practical assignment.
Still having doubts?
Do you like technique and the way it is implemented but are you not quite sure whether Information Technology is the best course for you, it would be a good idea to take a look at related courses with a different focus:
The first year is divided into four terms, which are organised around central themes, such as web creation or application building. In this way you become acquainted with the broad IT field. You follow IT-related courses, but also mathematics and English to strengthen your basic skills. You will immediately put what you've learned to practical use.
Check the first-year timetable
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In the second year, we dive deeper into the subject matter and you learn how to programme in PHP and JAVA. The projects focus on NoSQL, web applications and API programming. You learn how to manage your applications. You carry out a code generation project. In addition to technical subjects, communication skills, English, socio-ethical and legal aspects and desk research also comes into play.
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During your third year, you do an internship at an organisation of your choice. This internship will enable you to become familiar with the day-to-day work of an IT professional and opportunities in this line of work. If you wish, you can also do the internship abroad.
Specialisation
After the work placement, you enter the graduation phase in which you begin to specialise. In the second half of the third year and first half of the fourth year, you can choose between various different minors. For a maximum of six months, you may take a minor at a different university of applied sciences in the Netherlands or a university of applied sciences or university abroad.
The following options exist:
Game Engineering (February - June)
In a team, you will design and develop a game that serves a purpose. This can be either a ‘serious game’ or ‘casual game’. A serious game is meant to be educational, such as a simulation. A casual game focuses on entertainment, with the objective to collect funds for a charity or to generate publicity.
UX Design (February - April)
Within the fast-growing digital world new software is released every day.
A lot of these desktop and ever-growing mobile applications are targeted to specific user groups as tooling for a specific problem they might encounter.
These applications range from E-health tools for supporting specific therapies for people at home to software to stimulate people to choose environment-friendly routes by avoiding schools and dens populated areas while traveling by car. In order to make these tools really useful their operation should be flawless, and their interface should be clear and understandable.
A great design however finds its base in researching the human angle, taking into account the people’s own perspectives, daily lives and struggles. Meeting them, interviewing them talk about their processes, needs and experiences with (perhaps) other tools. All this knowledge is then combined into a design that is based in reality, offering a fitting user experience (UX) for the intended audience.
In this course we try to emulate real life conditions by offering a methodology for student to find and sort information to be able to come up with the best design solutions. Students will work on real live issues from real clients. Their solutions should be based in research and visualized in a feasible and testable prototype.
Big Data & AI (April - June)
The “Big Data & AI” minor is about discovering patterns in large amounts of data and creating intelligent data applications. Is there, for example, a connection between traffic incidents and the weather? You will develop an application which enables you to present the results of your research in a map or a graph.
Topics that are included in this minor are ‘Big Data & AI’ fundamentals and Apache big data projects (e.g. Hadoop, Pig, Hive and Spark). The project has a substantial regional and practical emphasis and is designed to get students acquainted with the concepts of machine learning, deep learning and applied artificial intelligence in general.
In the fourth year, you will first take various minors for six months. You can choose from Mobile application development, Cloud Computing and Security. The minors are followed by the individual graduation phase which almost always involves an independent research and development process commissioned by a company. For example, you might develop a proof-of-concept for a mobile application. In your graduation thesis, you will then report on the project.
Mobile application development (September – January)
The vast adoption of mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets has rapidly changed the landscape of stand-alone application development for consumer applications. Mobile devices provide various application design challenges, due to their modest screen sizes, and provide innovative application opportunities. This minor focuses on teaching you how to design and develop native applications for iOS and Android, with an authentic platform specific look and feel.
Designing a mobile application is covered in Mobile UX workshops. Hands on development experience with iOS and Android is obtained in workshops covering these platforms. A preparation for using the applicable programming languages (Swift and Kotlin) is provided in separate workshops. A course consisting of classes and workshops provides you insights in security and communication best practices. You also get to experience a glimpse of the development of server side software by a crash course workshop Azure.
The core of the minor consists of a group project for an external client (not for profit), which provides you the opportunity to seeing your mobile application being applied in practice.
Cloud computing (September - November)
Over the past decade server side software deployment models have rapidly changed, and the availability of development services has greatly increased. Thorough knowledge of IaaS and PaaS solutions is vital to software developers specializing in backend software development.
This minor addresses these topics in a hands on manner, and teaches you how to develop serverless solutions. It consists of various classes and workshops with topics ranging from obtaining hands on experience with Microsoft Azure, to cloud database models, REST API design and testing, Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) and DevOps.
A general overview of the scope of the concepts of cloud computing is provided by the Cloud Computing course. The API Design course teaches you how to properly design and document an API based on the RESTful paradigm using OpenAPI (Swagger). The API Testing course provides you insights in how to perform automated tests on an API, and how to integrate this into a CI/CD pipeline. A course in Cloud Databases allows you to differentiate between various options at hand for storing information in a scalable manner. Hands on experience is provided by several Azure development workshops.
The core of the minor consists of a group project for an external client (not for profit), which provides you the opportunity to seeing your backend being applied in practice.
Security (November - January)
Almost daily news reaches us that the government or companies are dealing with cyber-attacks by hackers. Today’s software engineering professionals must understand the basic discipline of building secure software. Not because “it’s a good idea”, but because the nature of the internet mandates it.
This minor is highly practical and is divided into a number of courses. The first course covers penetration testing. You will learn how the target system works, the weaknesses of this system and how to practically exploit these weaknesses and hack into it. The second course is about secure programming. This course covers 24 deadly sins of software security programming flaws and how to fix them. The third course is about networking security. This course provides an introduction to the core security concepts and skills needed for the installation, troubleshooting, and monitoring of network devices to maintain the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of data and devices. The last course covers the module Information Security Foundation and legal aspects of information security
It is important that you quickly feel at home at Inholland University. That you know how your course is set up and how you can study effectively. Our Study Coaches are here to get you off to a good start and will introduce you to your study group. Should you have specific study-related problems, your mentor is happy to provide advice.
The IT sector is very international. Apart from operating globally, companies also provide services to customers abroad and you meet people from all corners of the world. An internship or study abroad is therefore certainly encouraged. We have partnerships with, for example, universities and companies in China or South Africa.