Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to describe the process of how to develop a part curriculum for a new challenging and emerging ICT technology in a higher education organization. The structure of the developed data analytics (DA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) curriculum as well as the contents of the courses will be presented precisely.

DA and AI have appeared in magazine titles in recent years and have become very hot topics. With the fast development of technology, the terms Digitalization and Big Data have gained strong publicity. Data is produced at an accelerated pace almost everywhere where people’s actions and various, mainly electronic systems meet. Often data is compared to crude oil, which acts as raw material and through the refining process produces new products for industry. In spring 2017, the Institute of Information Technology at JAMK University of Applied Sciences (JAMK) started to develop its competence in DA and AI. The lack of good and well organized higher level education material and knowledge of the previously mentioned technology were the major challenges during the development process. Basic and very high-level theoretical courses from DA and AI can be found easily; however, hands-on type implementation courses were missing.

During the curriculum development process, the staff and students co-operate as a team and develop the ability to carry out concrete real-world DA and AI use cases. The diversity of the use cases provides a strong insight how the curriculum has to be structured and what kind of knowledge has to be included. The ability and knowledge in DA and AI are well documented and refined to 30-ECTS education and a part of the curriculum in ICT engineer education.

The curriculum consists of the following courses:
• Data preprocessing, 3 credits
• Big Data environments, 5 credits
• Data analysis, 4 credits
• Machine Learning, 5 credits
• Deep Learning, 5 credits
• Project Work on Data Analytics, 4 credits
• Project Work on Artificial Intelligence (AI), 4 credits

Precise knowledge of course contents has been gained by doing, because every application of DA and AI differs in some way. Furthermore, the process of DA and AI projects varies significantly from a traditional ICT project as well as the use of DA or AI software varies from the use of traditional use of program libraries. The application of DA and AI requires a profound knowledge of the applicability of various machine learning (ML) methods and neural networks to the problem that is to be solved. Knowledge of theory alone is not enough; DA and AI must be tested in practice.

This continuous and iterative process of curriculum development has now been refined and is offered as 30-ECTS education in DA and AI which started in the fall of 2019 at the Open University of Applied Sciences. In the first implementation, only 35 participants were accepted, and the course was full within three minutes. The second enrollment started on 18 November 2019 with 100 places and the course was full within eight hours. The first 45 study places were reserved in about 2 minutes. In addition, JAMK will launch a Master’s Degree program in AI and DA with tuition in English in the autumn of 2020.

Keywords:

Artificial intelligence, Data analytics, curriculum courses, Big data, emerging technology, virtual courses.