When designing the master's program, its developers placed special emphasis on achieving a high use value for the professional practice. The academic content of the master's degree program is oriented towards the demands of the professional practice in research and development projects in businesses and institutions as well as towards the requirements for developing and operating complex applications and the corresponding infrastructures as they are needed for future-oriented, sustainable career paths. The specialized computer science focus of the program clusters around the two concentrations networked systems and interactive applications.

At the same time, when conceiving the master's program with the objective of enabling students to put together their plan of studies according to their own goals, special importance was attached to allowing students as many options and choices as possible.

The curriculum of the master's program thus comprises a broad catalog of electives that covers both concentrations in their breadth and at master's level but that also allows for some choice within each concentration that facilitates structuring the program to suit individualized educational goals. Both concentrations provide in-depth study of methodologies and technological competences. This is complemented by students' acquisition of comprehensive analytical, design and implementation skills that are obtained in the laboratories and practical projects attached to the lectures taken. Project management competencies are further developed in the context of the master's project. The master's project that students complete as part of industrial or on-campus research and development projects provides students with the necessary skills to conduct independent research projects. On the one hand, enterprises and research institutions increasingly require such a research focus to be able to assure German competitiveness, but the research focus at the same time prepares graduates for possibly entering a doctoral program.

The computer science modules of the two concentrations networked systems and interactive applications are chosen from two lists of electives, one with intensive modules that include project work (10 ECTS credit points) and one list of modules with a regular workload (5 ETCS points). Each elective module of both lists is assigned to one of the two or to both concentrations (compare the lists).

Students can petition to have one of the two concentrations entered onto their degree certificates retrospectively once a sufficient number of credit points from the appropriate modules assigned to the concentration in question have been accumulated. It is therefore not necessary to choose the concentration ahead of time. The master's project must focus on a topic from the chosen concentration.

The electives part of the curriculum comprises three intensive modules (3 times 10 credit points), four modules from the computer science list (4 times 5 credit points), the master's project (15 credit points) and the master's thesis including the thesis defense (30 credit points), which amounts to 95 credit points overall. Of these, 70 credit points constitute the threshold for fulfilling the concentration requirements. This corresponds the credit points for the master's thesis and 60 percent of the credit points from the electives area. For example, the 60 percent can be made up in the following ways:

• project + 2 intensive modules + 1 computer science module
• project + 1 intensive module + 3 computer science modules
• 3 intensive modules + 2 computer science modules
• 2 intensive modules + 4 computer science modules

Have a look at the module lists:

• Concentrations List
• Computer Science List