The flexible Master in IT
Master of IT is an educational cooperation between three universities in the western part of Denmark, offering a lifelong learning master’s degree programme for IT professionals. The purpose of the programme is to help reduce the digital competence gap by providing courses in fields such as IT security, IT implementation, IT development and IT management.
The key trademark of Master in IT is its flexibility, which means that:
- The students can choose between 24 courses to suit their interests and needs.
- Companies can get new IT skills which can quickly be used in practice.
- The three universities contribute with their individual specialist IT expertise without having to cover the whole range of courses.
Bettina Lundgaard Hansen, Development Manager at It-vest networking universities, who coordinates Master in IT, says:
“You can see our Master in IT like a buffet, where you can select exactly the courses you need. Many of our students study to improve their skills and competences within a specific academic and engineering area. Also, our flexible model allows us to update our range of subjects according to market needs, and in that way, we can easily provide knowledge on the latest theories and principles behind the development and use of IT. This year, for example, we have chosen to offer a new course in AI and a course in Visual Analytics.”
One course, several courses or an entire Master’s programme
Between 2006 and 2023 more than 2000 IT professionals have attended one or more courses at Master in IT, and the students come from various backgrounds, including IT businesses, the public sector, the industry, the financial sector, the health sector and the teaching community.
Most students at Master in IT take two courses, while 23 percent take a full master’s degree, which consists of 60 ECTS credits. A single course consists of 15 ECTS credits and the students are free to put together the optimum combination of courses.
By selecting specific combinations of courses, students can specialise within cybersecurity, data science, IT architecture, digital transformation and innovation, IT management, etc.
From many part-time programmes to one Master in IT
Before Master in IT were conceived in 2006, there were 10 different master’s degree programmes within IT across the three universities in the western part of Denmark, but the programmes were overlapping and challenged due to few students and thereby competing for the same applicants.
Through the It-vest cooperation, the three universities decided to cooperate on one joint Master’s in IT degree programme.
Bettina Lund Hansen from It-vest explains:
“Collaboration is not always easy, and we have experienced challenges relating to administration, ex. the three universities do not use the same IT systems. But the flexible model of our programme overshadows the difficulties and most importantly, our students are extremely satisfied, both with the content and structure of the programme.”
In 2022, It-vest conducted a major evaluation among graduates showing that 97 percent would recommend the Master in IT to others.
Success stories
International award
In 2020 the Master in IT won the Best Practices in Education Award presented by Informatics Europe.
Chair of the 2020 award committee, professor Elisabetta Di Nitto (Politecnico di Milano), declares: “This year we honour the outstanding educational initiative that is dedicated to promote and support lifelong education to reduce the talent gap we are experiencing in Information Technology. The winner is a well-structured Master of IT born from the educational cooperation between three universities in Denmark, offering a lifelong learning part-time master’s degree programme for IT professionals. The participants come from various backgrounds, including IT businesses, the public sector, industry, the financial sector, the health sector and the teaching community. The Master of IT provides knowledge on the latest theories and principles behind the development and use of IT. At the same time, it presents the students with methods and techniques that are relevant for the students’ current and future work profile.”
Testimonials from students
From the teaching community Ib Havn, associated professor at the ICT-Engineering education, VIA University College, Horsens, has been a student at the course: “Real-time embedded software and IoT systems” says, “The teaching about real-time programming and distributed systems was really interesting and instructive to me. That is, questions about how to get small controllers to talk together in a real-time way. One of the main reasons why I chose this course is also because embedded software has my personal interest and that I regularly teach students of IT engineering in this field. The academic knowledge has certainly given me a lot compared to my own preparation of teaching. Here I use the theories and the methods to reflect on what it is that I study and teach.”
From the IT industry Michael Ustrup, Senior Systems Engineer at Systematic says, “My biggest benefit must be that today I feel really good about working with secure software. Among other things, I have become much stronger in asking the right questions about IT security for a project, and I know how to find the right knowledge if I encounter problems I do not know of.” Michael Ustrup continues: “I dare say that Systematic gained 120 percent from the fact that I took the Secure Software Construction course. I draw on my knowledge from the course every single day, both when working on projects that specifically relate to security components and when it comes to very common projects where security should be part of the general risk analysis for a project. “
From the financial sector Jesper Lund Klaris, Scrum Master at Bankdata. “I studied the course IT strategy and organisation because strategy and governance are elements that need to be understood in order to act in the financial sector. The biggest benefit was the final project where my colleague and I immersed ourselves in our own business. We looked at how governance is linked to customer satisfaction in Bankdata. In fact, a number of changes subsequently occurred, which were well in line with our conclusions. After taking the course, I was also more able to enter a strategy dialogue, and my opinion got more weight because my views were based on theory and the literature, not just on a gut feeling.”
From the creative sector James Norwood, Senior Play Innovation Manager at LEGO Creative Play Lab. “I continue to draw on my knowledge from the course Interactive Physical Products, because there are many parallels between the type of front-end innovation we work with in our Play Lab and what I learned from the course. Ex. some of the subject’s quantitative and qualitative research methods that I use with our user tests of children’s play. In addition, I also refine some of the design methods I learned in the course, and particularly the research method “Research-through-design” which was part of the course curriculum. All that knowledge is super useful for me today.”
Facts about Master in IT
Master of IT is an educational cooperation between The University of Southern Denmark, Aalborg University and Aarhus University offering a part-time master’s degree programme for IT professionals. The programme is coordinated by It-vest – networking universities.
To enter Master in IT, the applicants must have at least two years of relevant work experience after completing the qualifying education, which is an education at bachelor’s level.
For IT professionals, who are close to, but do not quite meet the admission criteria of Master in IT, a set of bridging courses are offered. Since 2006 the bridging courses has given more than 300 additional students the possibility of a degree programme in Master in IT.
In 2020 the Master in IT won the Best Practices in Education Award presented by Informatics Europe.
Read more about Master in IT.
