Computing is a vital part of the mass communications age. Effective data communication is essential to all organisations. It has never been more exciting to work in this area.
This MA Computing degree covers the same core computing courses as taken in the BSc Computing Science degree programme. You will also have the option to follow a range of arts based courses.
This programme is studied on campus.
Helping doctors to treat a newborn baby, analysing the huge volume of data from the human genome, tracking jet engines in flight and ensuring that maintenance is planned accordingly, and making online shopping easier and more secure - these are just some of the challenges that computer scientists rise to every day by using their technical analysis, design and programming skills that they learn at university to create better and more intelligent tools.
The highly relevant curriculum, along with strong industry links, ensures that computing programme graduates have an advantage in a competitive market place. The British Computer Society (BCS) recognises our Single Honours degrees for professional membership without additional examinations. The employment record of our graduates is excellent with the vast majority entering occupations of their choice within three months of graduation, in sectors as diverse as banking, pharmaceuticals and computer game development.
With us you will learn a range of key computing skills and components, including, data management, artificial intelligence, computer programming, human-computer interaction, operating systems and web application development, to name a few.
You will also gain a great mix of theory and practical skills. This is possible in part because of an excellent staff-student ratio and strong record of supporting students find work placements.
A degree in Computing is taught via a selection of compulsory and optional courses to enhance your learning and prepare you for a future career or further study. In each year you will take courses adding up to 120 credits. Depending on the number of compulsory and optional courses offered by your degree, you can also choose other eligible courses which fit your timetable.
Year 1 focusses on the foundations of computing, including how to design and implement programmes. You will also study two other subjects depending on your degree route.
Beginning with digital logic gates and progressing to the design of combinational and sequential circuits, this course use these fundamental building blocks as the basis for what follows: the design of an ARM microprocessor. In addition, students will get hands on experience with programming using ARM assembly language which is the inner language spoken by the processor. By the end of the course, students will have a top-to-down understanding of how a microprocessor works. The course is taught without prerequisites; students are taught with plenty of exercises from lectures, tutorials, practical and tests every week.
This course, which is prescribed for level 1 students and optional for level 2 students, is studied entirely online and covers topics relating to careers and employability, equality and diversity and health, safety and wellbeing. During the course you will learn about the Aberdeen Graduate Attributes, how they are relevant to you and the opportunities available to develop your skills and attributes alongside your University studies. You will also gain an understanding of equality and diversity and health, safety and wellbeing issues. Successful completion of this course will be recorded on your Enhanced Transcript as ‘Achieved’ (non-completion will be recorded as ‘Not Achieved’). The course takes approximately 3 hours to complete and can be taken in one sitting, or spread across a number of weeks and it will be available to you throughout the academic year.
This course, which is prescribed for level 1 students and optional for level 2 students and above, is studied entirely online and covers topics relating to careers and employability, equality and diversity and health, safety and wellbeing. During the course you will learn about the Aberdeen Graduate Attributes, how they are relevant to you and the opportunities available to develop your skills and attributes alongside your University studies. You will also gain an understanding of equality and diversity and health, safety and wellbeing issues. Successful completion of this course will be recorded on your Enhanced Transcript as ‘Achieved’ (non-completion will be recorded as ‘Not Achieved’). The course takes approximately 3 hours to complete and can be taken in one sitting, or spread across a number of weeks and it will be available to you throughout the academic year.
This course will build on the basic programming skills acquired in the first half-session and equip the students with advanced object oriented programming knowledge, implementation of data structure and algorithms, and basic software engineering techniques. The students will be challenged with more complicated programming problems through a series of continuous assessments.
Select a further 60 credit points from courses of choice.
You will be introduced to core topics in modern computing and develop significant programming skills in a number of languages.
This course provides a basic-level introduction to some areas of Discrete Mathematics that are of particular relevance to Computing. The course starts with a simple introduction to formal languages (starting from Regular Expressions and Finite-State Automata); it continues with an introduction to Predicate Logic (assuming basic familiarity with Propositional Logic); it concludes with an introduction to probability, focussing on Bayesian reasoning.
This course looks at why a computer system that interacts with human beings needs to be usable. It covers a set of techniques that allow usability to be taken into account when a system is designed and implemented, and also a set of techniques to assess whether usability has been achieved. Weekly practical sessions allow students to practice these techniques. The assessed coursework (which is normally carried out by groups of students) gives an opportunity to go through the design process for a concrete computer system, with a particular focus on ensuring usability.
This course will introduce the fundamental features of modern programming languages and to equip students with necessary skills for the critical evaluation of existing and future programming languages. Additionally, students study the formal representation of syntax and semantics of programming languages, as well as mechanisms for the lexical and syntactic analysis of programs. Students will be exposed to programming languages from three specific paradigms, namely, object-oriented, functional and logic programming.
This course provides the knowledge needed to understand, design and compare algorithms. By the end of the course, a student should be able to create or adapt algorithms to solve problems, determine an algorithm's efficiency, and be able to implement it. The course also introduces the student to a variety of widely used algorithms and algorithm creation techniques, applicable to a range of domains. The course will introduce students to concepts such as pseudo-code and computational complexity, and make use of proof techniques as well as the student’s programming skills.
Select a further 45 credit points from courses of choice.
This course discusses core concepts and architectures of operating systems, in particular the management of processes, memory and storage structures. Students will learn about the scheduling and operation of processes and threads, problems of concurrency and means to avoid race conditions and deadlock situations. The course will discuss virtual memory management, file systems and issues of security and recovery. In weekly practical session, students will gain a deeper understanding of operating system concepts with various programming exercises.
Students will develop large commercial and industrial software systems as a team-based effort that puts technical quality at centre stage. The module will focus on the early stage of software development, encompassing team building, requirements specification, architectural and detailed design, and software construction. Group work (where each team of students will develop a system selected using a business planning exercise) will guide the software engineering learning process. Teams will be encouraged to have an active, agile approach to problem solving through the guided study, evaluation and integration of practically relevant software engineering concepts, methods, and tools.
This course provides a basic-level introduction to computability via the notion of a Turing Machine. Some familiarity with imperative programming (e.g., in JAVA) and with the basics of set theory (e.g., the notion of a bijection) is assumed. The Functional language Haskell (familiar from earlier courses, including CS2013) is used to explore the concepts of infinity, recognisability and decidability, which are crucial to computability.
In this module, which is the follow-up of CS3028, student will focus on the team-based development of a previously specified, designed, and concept-proofed software system. Each team will build their product to industrial-strength quality standards following an agile process and applying the software engineering concepts, methods, and tools introduced in CS3028. The individual learning and practical experience acquisition process will be integrated by talks and seminars given by industrial stakeholders on topics of software engineering relevance, by guided student focus on professional issues, and by student presentations on selected technical topics.
Knowledge Representation (KR) is concerned with how knowledge can be represented symbolically and manipulated in an automated way by reasoning programs. In fact, KR has long been considered central to AI because it is a significant factor in determining the success of knowledge-based systems.
This course describes the formalisation of knowledge and its use in knowledge-based systems. It follows the whole "life-cycle" of knowledge, from the initial identification of relevant expertise, through its capture, representation (in ontology and /or rule languages), use (based on reasoning), evaluation, and reuse.
This course discusses core concepts of distributed systems, such as programming with distributed objects, multiple threads of control, multi-tire client-server systems, transactions and concurrency control, distributed transactions and commit protocols, and fault-tolerant systems. The course also discusses aspects of security, such as cryptography, authentication, digital signatures and certificates, SSL etc. Weekly practical sessions cover a set of techniques for the implementation of distributed system concepts such as programming with remote object invocation, thread management and socket communication.
This course provides insight into the business reasons for large software systems such as loyalty card systems, backend systems integrating firms and their suppliers and larges systems that integrate payroll, finance and operational parts of a business. You also learn the entrepreneurial aspects of business during the practical sessions where you explore and develop your own business application idea using service design and lean startup approaches centred around customer development, which you will find useful in any future work. This course is open to anyone across the university and requires no programming experience.
Select a further 15 credits from one course of choice.
Does this new algorithm improve query performance? Will this protocol ensure our system is robust to attack? How does response time vary with server load? Understanding behaviour, the performance of a task by a computing system in an environment, is critical in both industrial and scientific practice. In this course, you will conduct an individual research project into the behaviour of a computing system. You will develop knowledge and understanding of rigorous methods to: explore computing system behaviour; identify questions about behaviour; design experiments to answer those questions; analyse experimental results; and report on the outcomes of your research.
Computational Intelligence covers a wide range of issues that developed in parallel with, or in competition to, symbolic AI. The major constituents of the field are bio-inspired computing – which deals with an ever expanding number of biologically related techniques – and fuzzy logic – which deals with reasoning under conditions of vagueness. In this course we will explore a number of topics that are core to Computational Intelligence (e.g. neural nets and evolutionary computing) and these will lead into some state-of-the-art approaches (such as fuzzy model-based reasoning and learning).
The course provides a solid foundation in computer and information security. It will cover topics of Information and Risk, Threats and Attacks, Cybersecurity Architecture and Operations, Secure Systems and Products, Cybersecurity Management and Trustworthy Software.
Select 15 credit points from courses of choice.
We will endeavour to make all course options available; however, these may be subject to timetabling and other constraints. Please see our InfoHub pages for further information.
Students are assessed by any combination of three assessment methods:
The exact mix of these methods differs between subject areas, year of study and individual courses.
Honours projects are typically assessed on the basis of a written dissertation.
The typical time spent in scheduled learning activities (lectures, tutorials, seminars, practicals), independent self-study or placement is shown for each year of the programme based on the most popular course choices selected by students.
The typical percentage of assessment methods broken down by written examination, coursework or practical exams is shown for each year of the programme based on the most popular course choices selected by students.
The information below is provided as a guide only and does not guarantee entry to the University of Aberdeen.
SQA Highers
Standard: AABB
Applicants who have achieved AABB (or better), are encouraged to apply and will be considered. Good performance in additional Highers/ Advanced Highers may be required.
Minimum: BBB
Applicants who have achieved BBB (or are on course to achieve this by the end of S5) are encouraged to apply and will be considered. Good performance in additional Highers/Advanced Highers will normally be required.
Adjusted: BB
Applicants who have achieved BB, and who meet one of the widening participation criteria are encouraged to apply and will be considered. Good performance in additional Highers/Advanced Highers will be required.
More information on our definition of Standard, Minimum and Adjusted entry qualifications.
A LEVELS
Standard: BBB
Minimum: BBC
Adjusted: CCC
More information on our definition of Standard, Minimum and Adjusted entry qualifications.
International Baccalaureate
32 points, including 5, 5, 5 at HL.
Irish Leaving Certificate
5H with 3 at H2 AND 2 at H3 OR AAABB, obtained in a single sitting. (B must be at B2 or above)
The information displayed in this section shows a shortened summary of our entry requirements. For more information, or for full entry requirements for Arts and Social Sciences degrees, see our detailed entry requirements section.
To study for an Undergraduate degree at the University of Aberdeen it is essential that you can speak, understand, read, and write English fluently. The minimum requirements for this degree are as follows:
IELTS Academic:
OVERALL - 6.0 with: Listening - 5.5; Reading - 5.5; Speaking - 5.5; Writing - 6.0
TOEFL iBT:
OVERALL - 78 with: Listening - 17; Reading - 18; Speaking - 20; Writing - 21
PTE Academic:
OVERALL - 54 with: Listening - 51; Reading - 51; Speaking - 51; Writing - 54
Cambridge English Advanced & Proficiency:
OVERALL - 169 with: Listening - 162; Reading - 162; Speaking - 162; Writing - 169
Read more about specific English Language requirements here.
You will be classified as one of the fee categories below.
Most RUK students (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) on a four year honours degree will be eligible for a full-fees waiver in their final year. Scholarships and other sources of funding are also available.
| Fee category | Cost |
|---|---|
| Home / EU | £1,820 |
| All Students | |
| RUK | £9,250 |
| Students Admitted in 2020/21 | |
| International Students | £17,200 |
| Students Admitted in 2020/21 |
Further Information about tuition fees and the cost of living in Aberdeen
View all funding options in our Funding Database.
Our degrees develop an ability to understand new and complex computer systems and to communicate this to others. Our graduates can choose from a variety of employment opportunities in industry, commerce or research. Some of the organisations which employ our recent computing graduates include: Amazon, IBM, BP, Conoco, Hewlett Packard, EDS, Logica CMG, SAIC, British Telecom, QinetiQ, Microsoft, Prudential, the Health Service, and Local Councils.
Employment prospects for our graduates are excellent and, furthermore, the entrepreneurial spirit of some of our graduates has led them to establishing successful companies.
The British Computer Society (BCS) recognises our Single Honours degrees for professional membership without additional examinations.
You will be taught by a range of experts including professors, lecturers, teaching fellows and postgraduate tutors. Staff changes will occur from time to time; please see our InfoHub pages for further information.
The Aberdeen Software Factory is a student-run software house. Students can gain experience working on larger software projects and benefit from work experience, while clients will benefit from a flexible, cost effective solution to suit their needs.
Find out more
Placements are encouraged and available within a range of computing firms - summer months, between second and third year, or between third and fourth year.
