Software Engineering - BSc (Hons)

Program Overview

The BSc (Hons) Software Engineering program at Lancaster University Leipzig is a three-year bachelor's degree that provides a comprehensive grounding in computer science and equips students with specialist skills for a career in software engineering and design. The program aims to train students as "programming architects" who apply computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis to the design and development of large, complex, and critical software systems. It includes software engineering studio modules to provide broad skills and experience in solving real-world problems as a team. The program awards a BSc (Hons) degree from Lancaster University's Bailrigg campus in the UK, with all relevant accreditations.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

The BSc (Hons) Software Engineering program at Lancaster University Leipzig is a three-year bachelor's degree. It provides a comprehensive grounding in computer science and equips students with specialist skills for a career in software engineering and design. Software Engineering has been a major research theme at Lancaster since 1986. The program aims to train students as "programming architects" who apply computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis to the design and development of large, complex, and critical software systems. The first year focuses on fundamentals of computer science, software development, digital systems, and professionalism in practice. Subsequent years offer advanced modules and a group software engineering project to develop skills in designing, developing, and evaluating real-world software systems. The program includes software engineering studio modules to provide broad skills and experience in solving real-world problems as a team.

Outline:

Covers digital logic and multi-process operating systems.

• Fundamentals of Computer Science:
Covers logic, sets, vectors, matrices, linear algebra, algorithms, abstract data types, algorithm analysis, and data science principles.
• Professionalism in Practice:
Focuses on responsible computing, legal, social, ethical, and professional challenges, legal frameworks, professional codes, and working practices.
• Software Development:
Introduces software development processes and skills, including programming principles, language selection, problem analysis, design, programming conventions, documentation, testing, debugging, and version control.
• Optional elective modules:
Students undertake 40 additional credits from a selection of 1st-year elective modules from other departments.

Year Two Modules:

• Advanced Programming:
Explores functional programming languages, immutability, pure functions, lambdas, higher-order functions, pattern matching, currying, map/reduce, and their integration into mainstream languages.
• Algorithms:
Covers computational complexity theory, divide and conquer, recursion, parallel approaches, advanced data structures (tries, heaps, suffix arrays, k-d trees, distributed hash tables), and the impact of algorithm performance on energy efficiency.
• Secure Cyber Systems:
Covers Authentication, Authorization, and Accountability (AAA), access control models, policies, mechanisms, cryptosystems (symmetric, asymmetric), operating systems security, network security, and formal verification.
• Software Design:
Covers software architecture design, architectural styles, quality attributes (maintainability, performance, scalability), systematic design approaches, graphical models, object-oriented design with UML, and design patterns.
• Concurrent and Parallel Systems:
Covers multi-processor computer designs, their benefits and drawbacks, software tools and techniques for high-performance applications, and avoiding race conditions, deadlock, and livelock.
• Software Design Studio Project 1:
A group project applying project planning, management, requirements analysis, systems design (UML and design patterns), testing strategies, and report delivery.
• Languages and Compilation:
Covers formal language theory, grammars, compilers, interpreters, syntax, semantics, phrase structure grammars, Chomsky Hierarchy, lexical analysis, syntactic analysis, recursive descent parsers, semantic analysis, and code generation.
• Secure Cyber Physical Systems:
Covers security threats to Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), mitigation techniques, secure application development, Transport Layer Security (TLS), safety and privacy threats, and experimental testing.
• Software Design Studio Project 2 (Networked Studio):
A group project focusing on the integration and networking of software modules, distributed architecture, large-scale integration testing, and distributed team development.
• Software Design Studio Project 3 (Live Studio):
A large project with industry involvement, focusing on building a real-life system with potential commercial or research value, using an agile approach.

Assessment:

Assessment is via a combination of individual or group coursework, research projects, and examinations. Independent study is expected to supplement taught material.

Teaching:

Teaching is delivered through a combination of small group lectures and group-based tutorials.

Careers:

A Software Engineering degree can lead to careers as applications developers, cyber security analysts, data analysts, data scientists, game developers, information systems managers, IT consultants, machine learning engineers, multimedia programmers, web developers, web designers, software engineers, and QA/Test automation engineers.

Other:

The program awards a BSc (Hons) degree from Lancaster University's Bailrigg campus in the UK, with all relevant accreditations. The program's location is Leipzig, Germany, and the language of instruction is English. Not all optional modules are available every year. The program mentions Ahmet's successful start into his Software Engineering career as an example.

EU/UK €10,800 International €18,000