Curriculum

Graduates have an overview of methods and approaches of artificial intelligence. Students understand the suitability and limitations of various methods and can identify suitable algorithms for specific tasks and apply them in a meaningful way.

Artificial Intelligence

semester	1
type	compulsory course / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	oral or written examination
Logical foundations; Classical (non-data) AI; Data-based AI; Reinforce-ment learning; Bayes nets; Backpropagation; Multi-layer perceptrons; Neural networks; Deep learning; Algorithms and software.

Graduates will be familiar with the basic principles of human-computer interaction design, in particular the conceptual design of interfaces taking into account context-related requirements as well as the perceptual and cognitive psychology of human information processing. They know es-sential design guidelines and best practices derived from these principles and can actively apply them in the design process. Students know meth-ods for the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of user interfaces and have the skills to independently design, conduct and evaluate user stud-ies.

Human Computer Interaction

semester	1
type	compulsory course / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	continuous assessment
Overview HCI Design; Human Perception and Performance Models (e.g., Fitts's Law, Power Law of Practice, Hick's Law), Embodied Interaction, Spe-cial Topics in HCI (e.g., Gestural Interaction, Proxemic / Spatially-Aware Interaction, Tangible Interaction, Voice Interaction, Gaze Interaction); Intro-duction to empirical research methods (quantitative, qualitative), design and implementation of empirical studies, evaluation and reporting of results.

The analysis and visual representation of abstract data is becoming increasingly important in today's world, as ever larger and more complex amounts of data are being produced in a wide variety of fields that need to be evaluated and interpreted. Information visualization deals with computer-based methods for the visual representation of abstract data. Since these abstract data (e.g. numerical or textual data) are without spatial reference, a meaningful visual structure has to be defined which optimally supports the interpretation of the data. This involves exploiting the power of the human visual perception system to capture characteristic properties of a set of data and to discover previously hidden patterns.
Students know basic methods of information visualization to transform abstract data into suitable interactive representations that are adapted to human perception and underlying tasks.

Information Visualization

semester	2
type	compulsory course / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	continuous assessment
The course consists of a theoretical and a practical part. While the theoretical part serves as a basic introduction to information visualization, a practical project offers the opportunity to apply and deepen this knowledge. Theory: Definition of information visualization, role of visualization in data analysis, reference model of visualization, data types and structures, visual perception and visual variables, visualization and interaction techniques, narrative visualizations (storytelling), presentation of common visualization libraries.

Graduates are familiar with topics of software design and software system development specifically geared to interactive media, their fundamentals and the thought patterns behind them in theory and practice.

Software Design Methods

semester	2
type	compulsory course / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	oral or written examination
Modern Software Architectures and Methods of System Design, Modeling- and Design-Patterns, Development Environments, Test-cases, Use-cases, Performance vs. Elegance.

Graduates are familiar with the basics of scientificity and scientific work. They are able to formulate questions correctly, are able to map the current state of research through targeted research and know the adequate methods for their subject area in order to answer questions.
They acquire advanced knowledge about the chosen topic of their master's thesis, are able to formulate a scientific research question, answer it methodically and correctly and write it down in a stylistically correct manner.

Scientific Methods and Communication

semester	3
type	compulsory course / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	continuous assessment
Introduction and practice of scientific research. Philosophy, rules and conventions of scientific work in science and engineering. Research ethics, research integrity, responsible research and innovation, due diligence, conserving resources. Scientific analysis and argumentation, research, clear presentation of complex phenomena, design of experiments, levels of description, scientific language, use of formal descriptions, mathematical notation, falsification and verification. Forms of publications, use of scientific literature, common rules of publishing. Students are required to conduct and present (both written and orally) a solid literature review on a specific topic summarizing the state of the art in that area. The result should be a publishable report similar to a professional conference paper, both in content and formal quality.

Students will have a detailed knowledge of advanced techniques in real-time computer graphics and will be able to implement them in selected applications. Students understand theoretical and mathematical aspects of algorithms used in computer games, computer-animated movies and visual film effects.

Real Time Graphics

semester	1
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	continuous assessment
Computer graphics fundamentals; algorithms and software; rasterization; transformation pipeline; animation; lighting and illumination; materials; postprocessing and image-based techniques; non-photorealistic render-ing; texturing and texture-based techniques; shadows; ray tracing.

Graduates are familiar with in-depth topics in the area of interactive media.

Special Topic in Interactive Media I

semester	1
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	continuous assessment
Alternating selection of current in-depth topics in Interactive Media, such as: - Physical Prototyping - Green Media Systems - Digital Terrain Modeling etc.

Graduates are familiar with advanced methods and techniques from the field of machine vision. In addition to mathematical and theoretical under-standing, students also acquire practical skills in the implementation and application of algorithms and software that are used, for example, in ro-botics, medicine, biology, astronomy and media technology.

Visual Computing

semester	2
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	oral or written examination
Fundamentals of digital image processing and machine vision; visual perception; colours; cameras; linear and non-linear filters; spectral meth-ods; geometric operations; interpolation methods; multi-perspective methods; artificial intelligence; algorithms and software.

Graduates possess detailed knowledge of the conception and design of user interfaces, taking into account various input and output modalities, interaction forms and interaction patterns. They are able to create respon-sive designs that ensure an optimized presentation of and interaction with content on displays of different sizes. In addition, they are able to design user interfaces that use new forms of interaction (e.g. gestures, tangibles, proxemics, speech). Students master useful techniques for realizing and testing user interface designs with the help of digital or physical proto-types (e.g. usability testing, Wizard-of-Oz experiment).

User Interfaces

semester	3
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	continuous assessment
User interface design guidelines; mobile-first and responsive design of graphical user interfaces, creation of clickable prototypes, component-based UI design systems; planning, implementation and evaluation of methods for the evaluation of graphical user interfaces (e.g. usability study, heuristic evaluation); application of techniques for the design and evaluation of embodied user interfaces (e.g. elicitation study, wizard-of-oz experiment).

Students will be familiar with hardware components for the Internet of Things and will be able to plan, combine and program them for selected use cases. Platforms such as Raspberry PI, Arduino and simple microcontrollers, their programming and connection options to sensors and actuators are covered as well as data transmission via alternative communication channels such as radio, mesh networks (ZigBee, Z-Wave) and RFID.
Furthermore, the students know the basics to plan and implement complex, cloud-based applications. Nextcloud, and established systems such as Amazon Webservices and Microsoft Azure are used as cloud platforms. Practical applications are demonstrated and developed using voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri and Google Now.

Pervasive Computing

semester	4
type	course option/optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	continuous assessment
Hardware platforms and their I/O capabilities, programming of digital and analog inputs/outputs, addressing sensors and actuators on various ex-amples. Secure communication in the cloud, authentication using Oauth2, client and server frameworks in PHP, Java and C++, WebSockets, Rest-APIs, VPN and Ipsec, machine-to-machine protocols in the cloud like MQTT and HTTPs, development of skills for voice assistants (custom skills, home automation skills, proactive events, ...), connection to IoT hardware for control and data acquisition.

Graduates know the complex workflow required for the concrete realiza-tion of computer games. Students have expertise with a professional 3D game engine and know agile development processes.

Game Development

semester	1
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	oral or written examination
Introduction to game development with a 3D game engine; asset produc-tion, pipeline & integration; fundamentals of sound, networking and phys-ics in modern games; integration of middleware APIs; scripting; data-driven game development; project management in the software domain, agile development methods, software prototyping & testing. In the course, game projects and tech-demos are defined together, each with an innova-tive feature. These are iteratively developed and tested in teams using agile methods. Special consideration is given to 3D multiplayer and net-work games.

Graduates have knowledge of software and architecture patterns in the context of interactive real-time applications. They have an overview of the internal processes and mechanisms of current game and physics engines, as well as a theoretical and practical understanding of real-time physics simulation and its requirements and limitations. You have practical knowledge regarding the implementation of domain-specific problems using classical and visual programming methods.

Real Time Engineering

semester	2
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	oral or written examination
Fundamentals of interactive real-time applications. Requirements and solutions for delay-free processing of user input, adaptation of the data model and visual and auditory output (data structures, software design patterns, architecture patterns). Fundamentals of real-time physical simulations. Implementation and integration with visual programming techniques (visual scripting).

Graduates are familiar with different approaches for spatially connecting virtual and real content. In addition to theoretical and practical content, students also explore UX-related challenges in immersive areas such as virtual reality, augmented reality, embodied interaction, tangible user interfaces, etc.

Spatial Computing

semester	3
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	oral or written examination
Fundamentals of immersive systems (AR/VR/XR) in a spatial context; integration of internal and external sensors and optical systems for track-ing and location-based information; exploration of UI/UX challenges in the XR domain; approaches for multi-user, multi-modal "cross-virtuality" ap-plications

Graduates will be familiar with current architectures and frameworks for client-side web programming, as well as the workflow and tools for auto-mating typical workflow in web development. They are able to design multimedia web applications themselves and implement them according to the latest standards and with current tools.

Hypermedia UX Engineering

semester	1
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	continuous assessment
Modern JavaScript and other client-side languages (e.g. Type-script), workflow tools (e.g. Babel, Webpack), frameworks (e.g. React, Angular, Vue), components, state management (e.g. Redux, Vuex), web APIs (e.g. REST, GraphQL), UI frameworks.

Students have gained an understanding of the principles of modern hypermedia application architectures with a focus on server-side application layers with different platforms. The students are able to select the most suitable tools for the respective application purpose from the multitude of existing and emerging tools and to use them correctly.

Hypermedia Frameworks

semester	2
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	oral or written examination
Architectures of Hypermedia Applications, Server-Side Frameworks (e.g. Spring Framework, Ruby on Rails, Play Framework), Rapid Application Development, Reactive Programming, Web Services, REST, Persistence Libraries.

Graduates have knowledge of applications of artificial intelligence meth-ods for processing and analyzing text data. They can implement different methods for typical practical problems and evaluate the results. Further-more, visualization methods can be applied for presentation and analysis. Graduates understand the broad spectrum of problems, tasks and solu-tion approaches in NLP (Natural Language Processing).

Intelligent Media

semester	3
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	oral or written examination
Fields of application of NLP, Basics of an NLP processing pipeline, Methods for text representation, Text classification, Topic Analysis, Information extraction, Chatbots, Applications in social media and e-commerce

The students know the process in Big Data pipelines and know important techniques that are necessary for the implementation of the individual phases. They can correctly assess important techniques that are neces-sary for scaling and processing large data volumes and make a suitable technology selection (e.g. SQL vs. NoSQL database) or define the deci-sion criteria for this. Students will be able to choose appropriate visualiza-tions of the Big Data pipeline results.

Game Spaces

semester	4
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	oral or written examination
Scaling horizontal vs vertical, Shards, ReplicaSets vs Partitions, Transac-tions ACID vs BASE, CoherenPaaS, Open Schema vs strict Schema, Document Oriented Databases, Map Reduce vs GROUP BY, HAVING, ROLLUP, CUBE , Indexes, Hashes, Vector Clocks, Paxos, RAFT In-Memory, Caching, CDN, Analytics + (AI), Statistics, Algorithms (NOT: NLP, Text Analytics and AI Basics), Graph Databases (e.g. Neo4J), CQL vs SQL recursive with, MongoDB, OpenSchema, vs JSON, Key Value Stores (e.g. Redis), Large RDBMS installations (e.g. Prostgres CITUS or Greenplum, Oracle Exadata), Polyglot Data Model. Big Data pipelines (e.g. ELK stack, Databricks), visualizations (e.g. with Kibana, Grafana, Phyton).

raduates are familiar with in-depth topics in the area of interactive media.

Special Topic in Interactive Media II

semester	4
type	compulsory optional subject / Integrated course
ECTS	5
type of examination	continuous assessment
Alternating selection of current in-depth topics in Interactive Media, such as: - Physical Prototyping - Green Media Systems - Digital Terrain Modeling etc.

Graduates were given the opportunity to deal with concrete tasks in prac-tice and to deepen their individual knowledge beyond the content of the courses at an independent working level corresponding to the master's degree.

Project I

semester	1
type	compulsory course / Project
ECTS	10
type of examination	oral or written examination
Guided project work on topics provided by faculty members or proposed by the student. Working in teams (of size 2–4) is encouraged to foster project management and team collaboration skills. Each project is coached by at least one faculty member.

Graduates were given the opportunity to deal with concrete tasks in prac-tice and to deepen their individual knowledge beyond the content of the courses at an independent working level corresponding to the master's degree.

Project II

semester	2
type	compulsory course / Project
ECTS	10
type of examination	oral or written examination
Guided project work on topics provided by faculty members or proposed by the student. Working in teams (of size 2–4) is encouraged to foster project management and team collaboration skills. Each project is coached by at least one faculty member.

Practical project for the master's thesis, guidance on scientific work.

Thesis Project

semester	3
type	compulsory course / Project
ECTS	10
type of examination	oral or written examination
The project in the 3rd Semester is explicitly dedicated to the practical part of the Master thesis. The coarse aim and scope of the thesis should be clear at the beginning of this semester based on a well worked-out initial proposal. This project should provide sufficient time for orientation and additional research to refine the topic and for implementing the practical part of the thesis. In most cases this project is performed individually (ex-ceptions are possible) and coached by the final thesis advisor.

Start of the preparation of the master thesis. This module is mainly aimed at independent work on the master thesis topic and communication of the results of the master thesis.

Master´s Thesis I

semester	3
type	compulsory course / Project
ECTS	5
type of examination	oral or written examination
Thesis research and Master thesis Part 1. Every thesis is coached individually by a faculty member with regular obligatory meetings.

Preparation of the master's thesis. This module is mainly aimed at the independent work on the master thesis topic and the communication of the results of the master thesis.

Master´s Thesis II

semester	4
type	compulsory course / Master's thesis
ECTS	19
type of examination	oral or written examination
Thesis research and Master thesis. Every thesis is coached individually by a faculty member with regular obligatory meetings.