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Curriculum Software Technology

Master

Here is the curriculum for the master program Software Technology starting in the academic year 2009/2010. The curricula for past years are available at the bottom of this page.

Contents
Introduction
Courses (75 ECTCS = 10 courses)
Thesis Project (45 ECTS)
All Courses Taught by the Department
Curricula of Previous Years

Introduction

The master program Software Technology takes two years of study and has a total size of 120 European study points (ECTS).

The academic year is structured into four periods. In each period a students usually takes takes two courses of 7.5 ECTS each. The structure of a typical program is summarized by the table below. If you need a full overview and schedules over all CS courses see also here: http://www.cs.uu.nl/education/.

Period	Year 1
1	SWE, SWS, FPLC
2	CCO, PV, elective
3	AFP, elective, experimentation project
4	SWA, APA, DBA

Period	Year 2
1	GP, seminar
2	Thesis Proposal
3	Research
4	Thesis Writing

It is important to realize that the following explanation of the master curriculum is a general one, and every study plan that follows it is allowed by default. Depending on requirements and knowledge of the student, he and the student advisor can agree to divert from the standard.

It is possible to start the program in February (period 3), but if you must do the Deficiency course (this is often the case for foreigners and people coming from HIO/HBO), then it makes no sense, because that course is only offered in September. If you have no deficiencies in functional programming, grammars and parsing, then starting in February is no problem. If you are unsure whether you have deficiencies, contact the student advisor.

Seminars are not restricted to period 1: other periods also offers a number of seminars. Consult the list of seminars below to see what is offered this year.

Courses (75 ECTCS = 10 courses)

Mandatory Courses (15 ECTS = 2 courses)

The following courses are required for all ST students:

If one or more of these courses have already been taken as part of the bachelor program, or equivalent courses have been taken elsewhere, courses from the list of Advanced Courses must be chosen.

Advanced ST Courses (30 ECTS = 4 courses)

At least four of the following courses should be taken from the following list:.

Profiling (22.5 ECTS = 3 courses)

This gives you the space to tailor the master program to fit your academic interest. A small part of this space is also used to compensate for missing background should that be the case. Using this space is bound to the following constraints:

If you are deficient (see below), you must take the deficiency course (1 course)
You can fill your Profiling space with any Advanced ST courses
You can take at most one Experimentation Project (count as 1 course)
You can take at most one extra ST seminar
You can take at most 2 courses from other master programmes in Computer Science

Note:

Courses used to substitute for mandatory courses do not count towards filling the credits for this part of the curriculum.
In the previous version of the curriculum, we have Free Choice and Elective as separate categories. They are now merged into this "Profiling space". Nothing change in terms of content; we just change the way they are explained.

Deficiencies (7.5 ECTS = 1 course)

Students without a computer science bachelor from Utrecht University, typically lack bachelor courses on functional programming, formal languages, and compilers. You will need these background to do the ST master programme. We offer a special 'deficiency course' (7.5 ECTS) to remedy those deficiencies. It is called the course FPLC which is given in the 1st period.

If you have no deficiencies then you obviously don't need to do the deficiency course.

Seminar (7.5 ECTS, count as 1 course)

Seminars usually take the form of small study groups in which a subject is studied in depth and may also have a practical component. The subjects are usually closely linked to the research conducted in the CST and follow up on earlier courses in the program.

In 2009-2010 (usually for students arrived in 2008) the following seminars will be given:

Software Technology for Teaching and Learning (period 1)
Advanced Compiler Construction (period 2)
Data Base Architectures (period 4)

Note that Data Base Architecures can be used either as a seminar or as an advanced ST course, but not both at the same time. The student is free to choose how he uses it, though.

Thesis Project (45 ECTS)

In the final thesis project a student performs research under the supervision of one of the staff members of the center. The project can be conducted in the ST-Lab of the center, in a company, or (partly) in a related (foreign) research group.

Thesis projects are structured in three phases: colloquium, proposal, and research. See further below for additional information about this part of the curriculum if you are a doctoral student.

Software Technology Colloquium (5 ECTS)

In order to prepare for the thesis project and get a broad overview of ongoing research in the Center and beyond, students attend the weekly Software Technology Colloquium. This colloquium provides a broad overview of interesting results in the ST area by means of research talks and paper presentations by internal and external speakers. Each student should attend at least 30 colloquium sessions, give one colloquium presentation about a topic of choice, and write a literature study about this topic. Here you can find a list of possible papers/programs/libraries to discuss. It is important that you first find a staff member or PhD student to judge your work, and start off on your own.

Thesis Proposal (10 ECTS)

After the colloquium obligations have been fulfilled, and with at most 7.5 ECTS op course obligations left, a topic for a thesis project can be chosen. Before actually starting the research, a student writes a thesis proposal containing a problem statement for the proposed research, positioning of the research with respect to other research, an overview of the literature in the field, and a planning for the project. The proposal should be accepted by the thesis committee before the project can start.

Research and Thesis (30 ECTS)

The final part of the project consists of performing the research according to the plan in the thesis proposal and writing a thesis about the result. Relevant parts of the proposal will typically find their way into the thesis. The project is finished with a defense of the thesis before the thesis committee.

Courses or seminars taught inside the department and not mentioned below may be approved upon explicit request, especially in relation with the choice of a specific thesis area.

All Courses Taught by the Department

The full list and schedules of all courses offered our Department of Information and Computing Sciences can be found in the Department's education page.