UCD vs DIT for CS Masters

stainluss

I'm trying to decide between

DITs MSc Computing (Adv. Software Dev.)

UCDs MSc Computer Science (Negotiated Learning)

Anyone have any experience doing either?

From an employment perspective DITs title makes it sound more intense but if I were to go abroad (and I intend to at some stage) UCD would be far more recognizable.

I also like the fact that attendance isn't as important at UCD (I'll be doing it part-time and working) and there's a larger research element...

L.Jenkins

I have done neither, but have you reviewed what both courses other and what is of interest to you? At the end of the day, only you can make that decision.

stainluss

Itzy wrote: »

I have done neither, but have you reviewed what both courses other and what is of interest to you? At the end of the day, only you can make that decision.

Thanks for your response.

Sure, they both have quite a similar offering with regards to the general Software Dev concentration.

That's why I thought I'd enquire here as to whether the teaching quality/ industrial links in either are tie-breakers.

a fat guy

I'm doing Negotiated Learning at the moment. So far, it's quite good. They'll really put you through your paces in the second half of the semester. The deadlines just roll in constantly.

The course itself allows you to take 60 credits worth of almost 100 modules for semester 1 and 2, then the third semester is either an internship (With some big names like Google, Goldman Sachs, Facebook, etc), a group project (4/5 people in each group, this is the default) or your own thesis (You have to largely sort this out yourself).

I think the biggest advantage that this masters gives you is the ability to carve out a specialization in whatever you're interested in. If you take a particular set of modules, you could get a note on your diploma specifying that you are a "data analyst person" because you took a specific set of modules from the data analyses stream. They have the same deal for cloud computing.

There are a few stinker modules in there, in particular a business decisions one should absolutely be avoided. Wireless networks is meant to have a massive workload and compiler development is meant to be extremely difficult (Odd, because it's only 5 credits). I did a ruby one (Meant for beginners, but if you go all out on the assignments you'll actually learn a lot about Ruby and how messed up syntactic sugar makes the language... Lecturer is pretty funny too and has good taste in music), context sensitive service delivery (The lecturer is an absolute saint and the material is VERY interesting), Practical Android Development (Android development is always fun, but beware that this is a large group project. The lecturer is sound out too) and Cognitive Science (Great material, but has nothing to do with software development. It was the only module that fit in with the rest of my selection and I was interested in psychology/philosophy so I gave it a shot. Lecturer is again very good at teaching the material).

For my second semester I'm doing SQL, Recommender Systems and Sensor Systems. I think the ten-credit modules are the best bang for your buck, but you could easily miss out on a few gems if you do this (Like Android).

So far I'm quite happy with the course. I did a few modules from WIT's communications masters and the work itself is about as difficult. I think that at this level everything just gets easier... I didn't have much trouble in WIT or UCD. Then again, I'd had a few months before my first WIT module and a couple of years before UCD. In some areas UCD can be more difficult because some practical requirements are vague enough that you have to cover a lot "what-if"'s, but I think this is particular to the Ruby module I did. I also wanted a masters from a university rather than an IT, so that was a factor for me too.

It's also probably worth mentioning that I've only heard of DCU being particularly good for computing students. I know trinity has a really good networking masters, but you don't want to pidgeon-hole yourself into something you might not like (I myself dislike networking!).

Lastly, you can take modules from the Advanced Software Engineering masters in UCD if you have two or more years of industrial computing experience. Bear in mind that these are EXTREMELY intensive and take place over the course of two weeks (I think it's something like lectures all one week, followed by practicals and assignments afterwards). So if you want to have the word "advanced" somewhere, that's another option for you.

If you have any questions, fire away!