Hilde Bakke

Master in Applied Computer Science

Christopher Frantz

Since the last evaluation, the study programme has undergone a set of staffing changes, as well as shift in offerings of courses, specifically on the advanced level. Responding to the action item "restructuring of preparatory courses for the thesis", this specifically involved the course MACS4000 that replaces the previous Research Project Planning course. Associated with this is the coordination of activities by the incoming course responsibles for Research Project Planning and Advanced Project Work. An aspect still under review is the definition of a clear disciplinary profile of MACS that responds to shifts in staff and research interests of the individual research groups, following their separation. The social-psychological environment is supported by a changed room arrangement for MACS students, as well as the continuous promotion of social activities across cohorts, with the respective responsible from the 2nd year involving first-year participants. The strengthening of industry links is primarily performed on course level, drawing on selective links to industry that can act as invited speakers and use the opportunity to solicit potential students for thesis work and/or employment.

Søkertall: Despite rising numbers in the past years, this actual intake reflected a considerable reduction (to 9+9) (despite a slightly increasing søkertall - 527) that we need to explore further. One potential explanation is the increased short-term demand on the labour market following Corona, which makes Master study less attractive than it would have been in the past. Social-psychological environment. This aspect has remained challenging during the past years, but has been attacked by a) continuing regular class meetings that involves all cohorts and pertains to curricular concerns as much as social aspects, and b) regular class events not involving the teaching staff, and aimed at fostering a degree-internal culture. Gjennomføring: In the past, we experienced very high levels of frafall in the degree. However, it turns out to be a administrative phenomenon, in that many students decided to leave the programme in the first few weeks, hence essentially appearing as students on paper, while having had limited (if any) engagement with the study programme. Relevans: Feedback from former students suggest the general relevance of the taught subjects, but highlight the overall tendency to increasing involve color-related courses, which graduates deem less relevant for their professional career. Internalisering: The study programme has a strong international orientation, specifically from the perspective of incoming students. To stimulate further interest for outgoing students, we explicitly invite the relevant person from the international office during the earlier class meetings to explore and highlight options.

The research environment has experienced a recent organisational change, alongside the formation of a new de-facto research group. Orientations and expertise requires readjustment, and realignment with the degree. Individually, research orientations of particular staff members have not changed, and we are able to cover the advertised courses (with few individual exceptions), but recognize the benefit from refined alignment, including shifting of substitution of selected courses. This interacts with the ongoing objective (see above) to redefine MACS strategic orientation (with respect to key directions and themes) within the wider NTNU degree portfolio.

The incremental shifts in course offerings for given cohorts may lead to poor alignment in different study paths, requiring a careful revision to establish a more stable overview of courses. Similarly, this is interlinked with the refined strategic orientation of MACS to be developed in the upcoming time.

Tiltak

Review correct courses for all cohorts

Further improvement of psycho-socialt environment. Discussion between study veileder and student representatives to come up with good strategies for deeper involvement. Current achievement is the active involvement in linjeforening (LOGIN).Responsible are primarily the identified class representatives in coordination with study veileder (to explore funding support and value of activities).

Psycho-social environment

NTNU:TIA:REST

Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering

Fakultet for informasjonsteknologi og elektroteknikk

The process of strategic reorientation of MACS is still ongoing, with initial changes including the prospective introduction of an Image Processing Specialisation for the cohort 2023 onward, alongside a separate orientation that aims toward entrenching the increasing focus on Medical Imaging as another prospective direction. In parallel, further developments involve the extended consideration of existing subjects at NTNU that could be introduced into the MACS portfolio to allow for more focal concentration of delivery of our own staff - so as to seek better use of the available resources.

Opptak: Following a usually high number in primaersøkers, we had an eventual uptake by around 20 students, lower than our past uptakes, but with sufficient margin to allow for a strong cohort. At the same time, we had an increase in completion of the degree, with a total number of 14 students this year, increasing from only 10 in the past year. Yet, another four students are expected to submit by the end of this year. It appears that the past cohorts took longer to complete their degree, with wider divergence in progress, but equally widening range of topics than we have observed in the past. Rekruttering: With the intent to increase local student numbers, specific focus was put on the presentation of the MACS degree to local students. At the same time, the stronger positioning of color imaging may help attract students that would otherwise move to other universities to stay in Gjøvik for their post-graduate work. Miljø: In the past year, we had great initiative by our local students who independently organised social events in order to foster the stronger interaction of local and international students, which has developed into a regular serious of events that all students are invited to. The class meetings suggest the success of such initiatives. Due to the small cohorts, and the disproportionately large number of international participants this supports the local integration. Progression: Previous levels of fråfall were next to exclusively related to late withdrawals of students that did not plan to continue the degree (up to one fourth of students), but had decided to a) effectively leave the study immediately after the start, or b) continue to pay semester fees while effectively engaging in or shifting to part-time study. A central concern of the past year was the limited own work commitment of students, an aspect that has been addressed by sharing it with the respective lecturers as a concern. As a response, specifically courses that build on group work or rely on larger independent work by students have now shifted to defining clearer milestones and progression expectations, so as to offer students more guidance. Furthermore, the interaction between course coordinators and project-specific supervisors has been increased to ensure aligned understanding of ongoing student expectations and progress. This is expected to extend to the Spring courses in 2023. Specifically, the newly introduced course MACS4000 is intended to better guide students in their penultimate semester in their preparation of their Master thesis. This aspect is closely monitored as part of the regular class meetings in which course-specific load levels are an explicit discussion point. Relevance: Relevance of the study programme is injected based on industry talks and other invited talks, specifically in the first-semester course, as well as selective external contributors on advanced semesters. Similar, industry involvement in Master theses is continuously appreciated, and increasingly adopted. Internationalisation: In the past year, we have made increasing effort in sending students to specific partner universities, commonly under the Erasmus scheme. At this stage, we have two students that are studying overseas for the current semester, and another student who will take her fourth semester at a foreign university (outside the Erasmus scheme). Internationalisation based on intake is traditionally high in MACS, exceeding 50 percent of students. The recruiting efforts are aimed at increasing the focus on local students. For a detailed discussion of quality indicators, please consult the attached file, under section ("Studieprogramrådets vurdering av kvaliteten i studieprogrammet ...")

The connection between research and study programme is an associated objective with the current strategic reorientation of MACS. This aims at better capturing and benefitting from the expertise of staff involved in teaching. To date, about 90 percent of the courses that are domain-specific (i.e., not generic courses related to methodology, etc.), are taught by staff actively engaged in research in these areas. The course portfolio has been reasonably stable over time, and in fact an objective is to seek better alignment between staff and course, as well as students' interests and current course offerings (see earlier point). An aspect that remains challenging is the Master thesis itself, since students are commonly relatively free in choosing their specific direction, oftentimes operating beyond specific disciplinary expertise of the scientific staff. By introducing distinctive topics at the beginning of the semester, we are beginning to alleviate this mismatch.

Detailed aspects of assessments regarding the study programme are discussed in the attached report.

Master in Applied Computer Science - MACS