Computer Science BSc (Hons) / MEng

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Identify the logical concepts underpinning the design of computer systems
• Demonstrate the application of practical digital circuit design and optimisation techniques
• Define the fundamental developments and functions of the CPU and OS (operating system)
• Apply mathematical skills that support the technical aspects of computing at basic and advanced levels

What you'll do

You'll learn a brief history of computing, as you discuss its sub-disciplines and its current trends and advances.

What you'll do

You'll look at the lifecycle of systems development to learn how to analyse a business-need, collect requirements, and design a relational database. You'll implement your design using industry standard software.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Use structured analysis techniques to identify the requirements of an information system
• Demonstrate the fundamental principles of database design and development
• Identify legal, ethical and professional issues associated with information systems
• Identify which database technology to use when making decisions on storing non-traditional data

What you'll do

You'll work in practical lab sessions on current and past technologies, using Windows and Linux platforms.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Recognise and use computer systems network terminology
• Define the fundamental principles of computer networking topologies, security and professional standards
• Describe the 7-layer Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model and discuss its application
• Examine the fundamental requirements of systems management and security
• Develop an awareness of the importance of ethics and communication law to the practice of journalism
• Identify network security and the impact of network vulnerabilities

What you'll do

You'll learn about practical programming techniques using the Python and Java programming languages.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Design, implement and test algorithms to solve problems using appropriate data types and control structures
• Design, implement and test object-oriented programs based on a specification
• Describe and analyse fundamental programming concepts and techniques

What you'll do

You'll also analyse and use these structures as you design efficient algorithms. To choose this unit, you need to have taken a first year programming module, and be confident in elementary mathematics.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Construct and use fundamental data structures to solve problems
• Demonstrate the practical effects of different data structures and typical algorithms
• Review and analyse the practical effects of using different data structures in the design of algorithms

What you'll do

To study this module, you'll need to take at least one of  the Computer Architectures and Operating Systems, Programming or Application Programming modules in your first year. 

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Interpret and apply mathematical notation for problems in computing science
• Apply proof techniques and logic in order to prove the correctness of solutions to mathematics problems
• Apply graph algorithms to solve practical problems
• Design, write and test programs using a functional programming language

What you'll do

You'll look at the implementation of operating systems, microprocessor architectures, routing, mobility, and security protocols. To study this module, you need to take the Architectures and Operating Systems, Networks, and Programming modules in year one.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Evaluate a multi-tasking and multi-user operating system
• Demonstrate the role of concurrency and communication in modern operating systems and processors
• Analyse the operation of advanced computer architectures and high performance processors
• Examine the principles, limitations and applications of current computer networks
• Apply the principles of error control, quality of service and security to networks
• Develop and interpret simple codes in a system-level programming language

What you'll do

You'll then explore the design and implementation of programming language concepts including language evaluation, syntax specification, compilation, control structures, memory allocation and abstraction mechanisms.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Design, implement and test programs making use of appropriate architectures, data structures, linked lists and design patterns
• Construct event based software applications with graphical user interfaces
• Explain the components of different programming languages and critically compare their design
• Define formally the syntax of language constructs and describe the operation of the phases of program compilation

What you'll do

You'll develop and document a medium sized software system as part of a project team. You'll also explore aspects of software development such as planning, requirements engineering, collaborative coding and testing, as well as best practice and application in specific industries.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Articulate the problems of scale in the development of larger software systems
• Review the diversity of 'difficult' software scenarios and their special problems
• Apply technical and process solutions to the problems of particular 'straightforward' software developments
• Discuss software development in a thoughtful, investigative, and well-argued manner

What you'll do

You'll explore virtual reality (VR), 3D web authoring, 3D printing and prototyping, 3D visualisation and simulation, and creation of movies and video games.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Explain the key concepts, processes, principles and issues of 3D computer graphics
• Appraise and use modelling and animation methods and tools

What you'll do

You'll explore data mining of unstructured data, business needs for analytic insights and scale-out architectures/platforms to perform analytics queries on large datasets. To study this module, you'll need to take the Programming module in year 1.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Demonstrate knowledge of main scale-out and Big Data system architectures.
• Analyse operating systems issues related to Big Data
• Design, implement and run algorithms to deal with large structured or unstructured datasets
• Apply the methods and algorithms for dealing with data streams

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Demonstrate how data can be effectively presented for a range of different needs.
• Identify how data can be analysed and used for informed decision making.
• Demonstrate use of appropriate tools for presentation of data in a way that supports decision making.
• Demonstrate how to communicate clearly and effectively in a range of situations.
• Identify tools and technologies that can be applied to data presentation and visualisation.

What you'll do

You'll focus on known classes of vulnerabilities and will cover standard pen-testing techniques such as scanning, intelligence gathering, local/network enumeration, local privilege escalation, persistence and domain privilege escalation.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Evaluate tools and techniques for intelligence gathering and enumeration, and for enumerating data/command injection vulnerabilities
• Propose recommendations for securing a system

What you'll learn

The learning objectives of this module are to be confirmed.

What you'll do

To study this module, you need to take a mathematics module and demonstrate your understanding of data representation (such as hexadecimal and binary.).

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Synthesise a secure computer system
• Evaluate common cryptographic techniques
• Analyse a cryptographic system, identify vectors for attack, and determine mechanisms for closing vulnerabilities

What you'll do

You'll spend five to six days with students in local schools from key stage 2 to sixth form, beginning your initial teacher training (ITT) award. To study this option, you'll need to demonstrate your commitment and suitability for school work, and pass a Disclosure and Barring Service check. 

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Demonstrate the skills required to work in an unfamiliar environment
• Explain the key aspects of teaching computing in schools, including knowledge of the National Curriculum, appropriate teaching techniques, and computing related topics
• Devise and evaluate appropriate ways to communicate a difficult principle or concept
• Reflect on your learning and experience during your time in school

What you'll do

You'll also cover the integration of client and server programs with API-based services, such as database access.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Identify industry best practices in web application design
• Design a contemporary web application using industry best practices
• Evaluate the design and implementation of web applications

What you'll do

To study this module, you need to take the Operating Systems and Internetworking module in year 2, or show an understanding of communication networking environments from a hardware and software perspective.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Evaluate current and emerging issues in the research and development of distributed systems
• Develop a conceptual model for evaluating distributed systems and their constituent components, encompassing new and emerging technologies, within distributed systems
• Apply and evaluate authentication and access control techniques for distributed systems
• Analyse the impact of attacks upon distributed systems.

What you'll do

You'll analyse relevant issues and literature, propose solutions to your problem, and investigate through lab or field based activities, case studies, surveys, documentary or database research to produce a final report.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Employ best practice methods and approaches to manage a large-scale project
• Identify and summarise the problem to be solved and put it in context
• Identify legal, ethical, social and professional issues relevant to your project and take necessary action(s) to address these issues
• Conduct a formal literature search, identifying, analysing, comparing and contrasting sources and writing an evaluative review
• Design, implement and test a substantial relevant artefact (or several smaller artefacts)
• Critically evaluate your work against its objectives, reflecting and generalising on the learning achieved in your written report

What you'll do

You'll learn about language theory, automata and sorting problems. To choose this module, you'll need to study the Discrete Mathematics and Functional Programming module in year 2, or show your understanding of basic algebra, set theory, logarithms and the structure of mathematical proof.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Analyse different computation models
• Demonstrate practical skills in the design of automata
• Explain the concept of computability
• Solve and analyse computation complexity of algorithms for practical problems

What you'll do

You'll work in a group to research and review selected protocols and techniques or design a solution to an advanced networking problem. To study this module, you'll need to take the Fundamentals of Networks module in year one, and Operating Systems and Internetworking in year two. 

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Evaluate the needs and requirements for wireless network technologies
• Identify the limits and applications of current networks and examine alternative technologies
• Apply the principles of security, error controls, modulations, and impairments of communication principles to the network technology
• Evaluate, assess and simulate the different techniques that shape the emergence of new network technologies
• Analyse, simulate and evaluate current network configurations and technologies, identify issues and provide solutions

What you'll do

You'll examine the philosophy of AI, how knowledge is represented, and various AI approaches to solving problems.

You'll need competence in at least one programming language and familiarity with basic mathematics.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Explain the motivation for pursuing Artificial intelligence, the implications and associated philosophical issues such as the nature of intelligence and learning
• Assess the differences between the major kinds of machine learning approaches (supervised learning, unsupervised learning and reinforcement learning) and describe and implement the founding principles for solving such problems
• Describe the main principles of Neural Networks, Fuzzy logic and Genetic Algorithms
• Understand, design, implement and critically evaluate the application of AI approaches

What you'll do

You'll apply analytic methods to business performance factors, and learn how to operate and query a data warehouse.

Part of your study will be in the Bloomberg Suite available at the Portsmouth Business School, where you'll work with the same data, analytics and software used by financial professionals to make fast-paced investment, trading and financial decisions.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the different types of financial data, reports and business decision making process
• Develop a comprehensive understanding of data warehouse core concepts by modeling and querying a data warehouse
• Select and apply suitable forecasting and analytics techniques for a given business analysis task
• Understand and identify shadow data, trends and outliers within a dataset
• Use basic data visualisation techniques to summarise and present financial data and insights

What you'll do

You'll be part of a interdisciplinary and entrepreneurial student team that receives a unique problem from a sponsor, drawn from areas such as policy, economics, technology, national security, environment or logistics. Using a range of 'Lean Start-up' methodological tools and techniques, you'll understand the problem and propose a potential solution for your sponsor.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module, you'll be able to:

• Demonstrate a sophisticated and empirically-grounded understanding of challenges facing large organisations
• Engage critically with a range of methodological tools and approaches commonly deployed to address real-world challenges
• Understand the practical dynamics underpinning team-based approaches to addressing challenges

What you'll do

You'll explore the tech industry landscape, looking at how you might fit into it, and how it affects business, government and society. You'll also look at entrepreneurial activities and employability strategies to support your early career. 

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Appreciate the effects of new technologies on businesses, government and society
• Use critical and analytic skills to assess the use of new technologies by organisations
• Think strategically about job search and early career development, with an informed understanding of the current tech industry landscape
• Appreciate of the approaches and actions required for enterprise

What you'll do

You'll also study the computer vision technology that's essential for developing vision systems in artificial intelligence applications for autonomous vehicles, mobile robots, visual surveillance and welfare monitoring. 

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Appraise the principles and methods of 3D computer graphics and their current implementations
• Analyse and solve computer vision problems using essential computer vision methods
• Apply 3D graphics methods, web programming languages and APIs to real world problems
• Use and evaluate appropriate computer vision methods and tools

What you'll do

You'll examine the fundamental IoT design issues, and the current and emerging hardware and software technologies that are used to support a range of IoT applications.

To study this module, you need to take the Introduction to Programming module in year one, or show Java programming knowledge and a basic understanding of communication networking environments, from both a hardware and a software perspective.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Evaluate the design and development of technologies on different layers, for typical IoT systems
• Evaluate the current and emerging issues in the research and development of IoT that cover current architectures, technologies, applications and trends
• Develop effective applications or protocols to exploit commercially available sensors and actuators in an IoT architecture

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Critically evaluate the need for security in communication and internetworks and in the context of evolving ethical/legal constraints
• Appraise the security threats in communication and internetworks
• Critically assess the ever-changing threat to IT, communication and internetwork systems in the development of a dynamic company security policy
• Critically evaluate methods for providing IT, communication and internetwork systems security
• Critically evaluate methods for IT, communication and internetwork systems audit

What you'll do

You'll explore theoretical and practical aspects of computational intelligence and robotics, such as kinematics, sensing, motion control and human-robot interaction. To study this module, you need to take the Introduction to Programming module in year one, or show programming experience and knowledge of fundamental mathematics.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Appraise the principles and methods of robot sensing and motion control
• Analyse different approaches and techniques in the robot sensing and control algorithms and systems
• Apply computational intelligent algorithms to real robotic systems
• Implement and develop practical programming skills for robot decision-making, robot motion control and human-robot interaction and collaboration in modern robotic systems

What you'll do

To study this module, you need to take a mathematics module and demonstrate your understanding of data representation (such as hexadecimal and binary.).

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Synthesise a secure computer system
• Evaluate common cryptographic techniques
• Analyse a cryptographic system, identify vectors for attack, and determine mechanisms for closing vulnerabilities

What you'll do

You'll apply different data mining and machine learning methods to databases and investigate their use for decision support.

To study this unit, you need to take the Database module in year one.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module, you'll be able to: 

• Model and implement a data warehouse
• Select and apply the data mining technique suitable for the analysis task
• Describe how data mining design and implementation methods could be used to solve live problems
• Critically analyse and evaluate the performance of different data mining techniques

What you'll do

You'll look at classification, mapping and optimisation problems, as well as prediction, control and decision problems.

Your studies will cover concepts such as explainable AI for advanced decision support, machine learning and machine reasoning under uncertainty with unreliable/noisy data or costly evaluations, active/transfer learning, data augmentation for supervised learning, reflection/rotation/translation of images and active machine learning. The module covers also concepts such as Deep Neural Networks, Reinforcement Learning, Adversarial Networks/Generative Systems, Approximate Reasoning, Logical Inference, Expert Systems, Rule Based Systems/Networks and Fuzzy Systems/Networks.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Appraise AI-based methods and algorithms in the context of the issues posed by particular problems
• Select appropriate AI-based methods and algorithms to address specific problem requirements
• Critically analyse and evaluate AI-based systems using machine learning and reasoning solutions
• Design and implement AI-based systems using machine learning and reasoning techniques

What you'll do

You'll apply appropriate technical knowledge and skills and demonstrate accomplishment in a wide range of appropriate soft skills, such as teamwork, critical thinking, progress reporting, communication skills, division of responsibilities, giving presentations and managing risks.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Work effectively both as an individual and as part of a team developing software for an external client
• Assess and develop existing knowledge from a range of areas and apply it to solving a problem
• Plan and manage a significant project to meet stated technical and business objectives
• Deliver an oral presentation to a client
• Critically appraise and reflect upon the management, delivery and outcome of a project

What you'll do

You'll focus on the application side and how data mining, as a tool, could be used in different applications.

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of current advanced methods and techniques in data and text analytics
• Design and implement data mining based applications to solve real-world problems
• Critically analyse and evaluate the performance of different data mining techniques for text analysis and analyse and interpret the data mining results

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Evaluate the applicability of current parallel processor architectures and their associated programming environments to significant classes of computational tasks
• Analyse computational problems to expose exploitable parallelism, and estimate or measure the performance improvements that can be achieved through this parallelism
• Develop effective parallel programs to exploit commercially important parallel architectures

What you'll learn

When you complete this module successfully, you'll be able to:

• Explain at an appropriate level mathematical methods of scientific computation
• Implement algorithms to simulate and visualize selected physical and biological systems and analyse scientific data
• Adapt scientific algorithms to exploit high performance and parallel computation platforms
• Assess and evaluate existing software platforms for kinds of scientific computing discussed in the module