Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University

Master of Digital Innovation (Director's Page)

Vlado Keselj, Director of Digital Innovation

Shortcuts: Internship Reports MDI Orientation 2024 MDI Official

Welcome to my page about the MDI program! My name is Vlado Keselj and as the Director of the MDI program, I would like to provide this page as a welcome message to the new MDI students, as well as a source of additional information to anyone interested in the MDI program – the Master of Digital Innovation program at the Dalhousie University.

The official pages about the program can be found at this URL (https://www.dal.ca/academics/programs/graduate/digital-innovation.html).

It was exciting to launch this program in September 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. All classes were on-line in that academic year.

The COVID-19 pandemic situation has further emphasized a need for a program such as MDI, when the digital transformation of businesses and organizations has accelerated due to the pandemic, and was sometimes referred to as a digital revolution. This change is the main focus of the program: educating and training a new workforce that will drive the digital transformation and innovate in the new digital environment enabled by the computer and Internet technology.

I would like to welcome new students in this fifth year of the program, starting in September 2024.

In the rest of this page and other pages at this site, you will find more details pertaining to the program. If you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email to either vlado@dnlp.ca or vlado@cs.dal.ca. Mentioning MDI in the subject line will help in having a more efficient communication. For admissions and administrative questions, you can send an email to the Computer Science Graduate Office at graduate@cs.dal.ca.

Regards,
Vlado

MDI Admission

MDI Admission details are described at this official page. I would like to add here a few more important details regarding admissions in the MDI program, and in particular related to the certificates, which we also call specializations:

You have to declare a certificate in your application, and the application will be evaluated based on requirements for a certificate and by the committee members who oversee that particular certificate.
Digital Business certificate assumes background, interest, or experience in the digital business area, including technical, business, or legal side.
Health Informatics certificate assumes background, interest, or experience in the health informatics area.
Data Science certificate is offered jointly with the Department of Statistics and assumes strong background and evidence of competence in statistics.
The MDI program has only the September program intake, and the application deadlines are June 1 for Canadian citizens or permanent residents, and April 1 for international applications, as shown in this page.

MDI Courses

We include here some of the MDI courses. The official MDI curriciculum page is here.

Foundation courses: Students are required to take two foundations courses in the first term which are determined by the MDI committee during the admission process.
DGIN 5100 Foundations in Web Technologies
DGIN 5200 Foundations in Business
DGIN 5300 Law, Policy and Ethics in Emerging Technologies
DGIN 5400 Statistics for Health Informatics

Core MDI courses: All MDI students take DGIN 5201 in the second term. The internship students are required to complete DGIN 7000 and DGIN 5001, and the thesis students are required to take DGIN 9000 and DGIN 5002:
DGIN 5001 Capstone in Digital Innovation
DGIN 5002 Research Methods
DGIN 7000 Internship in Digital Innovation
DGIN 9000 Master's Thesis

About MDI Certificates or Specializations:

All applicants to the program should also select one of the following specialization certificates: Digital Business, Health Informatics, or Data Science. We are working on the certificate in Digital Government, and hope that it may be available in Fall 2022.

MDI Curriculum: is described at this official page.
In the first term, the students take two foundation courses, which provide necessary background for the certificate, and are decided by the MDI committee from the following group of courses:
DGIN 5100 Foundations in Web Technologies
DGIN 5200 Foundations in Business
DGIN 5300 Law, Policy, and Ethics in Emerging Technologies
DGIN 5300 Statistics for Health Informatics
In addition to these two foundation courses, the students take one more elective course, which is typically a core certificate course. The students should also take the internship preparation course offered by the SITE office: CSCI 9890.

The students in the Certificate in Digital Business specialization generally take in the first Fall term two of the following three foundation courses:
DGIN 5100 Foundations in Web Technologies
DGIN 5200 Foundations in Business
DGIN 5300 Law, Policy, and Ethics in Emerging Technologies
and the following core certificate course:
ECMM 6000 Overview of Electronic Commerce

The students in the Certificate in Health Informatics specialization take in the first Fall term the following two foundation courses:
DGIN 5100 Foundations in Web Technologies
DGIN 5400 Statistics for Health Informatics
and the following core certificate course:
HINF 6101 Health Information Flow and Use

In the second term, the MDI HI-cert. students typically take:
DGIN 5201 Digital Transformation (MDI core)
HINF 6110
HINF 6230

Students should finish internship in the third term, and in the fourth term typically take courses:
DGIN 5001 Capstone in Digital Innovation
and two of the HI elective courses.

The students in the Certificate in Data Science specialization take in the first Fall term the following two foundation courses:
DGIN 5100 Foundations in Web Technologies
DGIN 5200 Foundations in Business
and the following core certificate course:
CSCI 6409 The Process of Data Science

In the second term, the students take the core MDI course:
DGIN 5201 Digital Transformation
and two elective courses.

In the third term, the students will take an industry internship, or work on their thesis, if they decide to go with the thesis option.

In the fourth term, the students should take either
DGIN 5001 Capstone in Digital Innovation (internship students), or
DGIN 5002 Research methods (thesis students)
and two elective courses.

Certificate in Digital Business

The official page for the Certificate in Digital Business is here. In addition to the two foundational courses, and other courses required by the MDI program (DGIN5201, Internship or Thesis, and DGIN5001 or DGIN5002), the students must finish five more courses as follows:

ECMM 6000 Overview of Electronic Commerce, mandatory

Three electives from this list:

ECMM 6014 Databases, Data Warehouses and Data Mining for Electronic Commerce
ECMM 6022 Project Management: A Managerial Approach
ECMM 6026 Management of Information (E-Government): International Experiences, and Perspectives
ECMM 6068 Internet and Media Law
CSCI 6505 Machine Learning
CSCI 6509 Advanced Topics in Natural Language Processing
CSCI 6610 Human Computer Interaction
CSCI 6612 Visual Analytics
BUSI 5902 Starting Lean
BUSI 6002 New Venture Creation
BUSI 6511 Business Process Integration Using ERP Systems
BUSI 6513 Business Analytics and Data Visualization
INFO 6513

and one free elective, a graduate course in Computer Science or Management.

Certificate in Health Informatics

The official page for the Certificate in Health Informatics is here. In addition to the two foundational courses, and other courses required by the MDI program (DGIN5201, Internship or Thesis, and DGIN5001 or DGIN5002), the students must finish five more courses as follows:

HINF 6101 Health Information Flow and Use, mandatory
HINF 6110 Health Information Systems and Issues, mandatory
HINF 6230 Knowledge Management for Health Informatics, mandatory

Two electives from this list:

DGIN 5401
HINF 6102 Health Information Standards and Use
HINF 6210 Databases and Data Mining for Health Informatics
HINF 6020 Research Methods

Certificate in Data Science

The official page for the Certificate in Data Science is here. In addition to the two foundational courses, and other courses required by the MDI program (DGIN5201, Internship or Thesis, and DGIN5001 or DGIN5002), the students must finish five more courses as follows:

CSCI 6409 The Process of Data Science, mandatory
STAT 5620 Data Analysis, mandatory
CSCI 6505 Machine Learning, mandatory

Two electives from this list:

INFO 6513 Business Analytics and Data Visualization
INFO 6681 Geospatial Information Management
STAT 5130 Bayesian Data Analysis
STAT 5350 Applied Multivariate Analysis
STAT 5390 Time Series Analysis
STAT 5550 Longitudinal Data Analysis
CSCI 6405 Data Mining and Date Warehousing
CSCI 6406 Visualization
CSCI 6410 Applied Research in Health Data Science
CSCI 6509 Advanced Topics in Natural Language Processing
CSCI 6515 Machine Learning for Big Data
CSCI 6517 Recommender Systems
CSCI 6612 Visual Analytics

MDI Internship Report

The students are expected to submit an internship report after completing an internship. The report must be submitted in the PDF format, and should be sent to the MDI Director. The deadline for submitting the report is the last day of classes in the given term (e.g., July 27, 2021 for Summer 2021).

Report Submission: The internship report should be submitted within two weeks after the internship is finished. The report must be in PDF format and should be sent by email to the MDI Director. Please make sure that the submission satisfies the following requirements:

The subject of the email must be:
```
Subject: DGIN7000 MDI Internship Report
```

Include the following information in the email:

Internship Report
Student: student name, banner number, email
Position: position title,
    or descriptive title if there is no official title
Employer: company name, address, web address
Supervisor: company supervisor (manager)'s name,
    email, phone number
Duration: from date to date, full-time or not,
          number of hours

Include the above information in your report as well
The report in PDF format must be attached with the email

About the Report Content: The report can be relatively short. This report has to include enough details to justify about 12 weeks of full time employment (or equivalent part time work) on issues related to digital innovation. In addition to the outline of the work performed, your internship report has to include details on the content of the projects you worked on, and an analytic component in which you demonstrate critical thinking. To fulfill this requirement you can motivate and outline a specific problem you worked on, discuss possible solutions (even if they have not been considered in your work) and derive conclusions and possible recommendations.

The report must include a section about "Lessons Learned", describing your learning experience during the internship.

Acceptance, Grading, and Deadlines: The report will be reviewed by the MDI Director or other faculty members of the MDI Committee. It may be returned to the student for additional revisions or clarifications. It is required that the report is accepted in order to finalize the internship and enter the "Pass" grade for the internship course (DGIN 7000).

If the internship report will be late, please be in touch with the MDI director. If a student is enrolled in the DGIN 7000 course and the internship report is not received on time, the grade "IP" (In Progress) will be entered, and the student should register for DGIN 7000 in the next term. It is assumed in that case that the student is still doing an internship after the end of the term and that it will continue into the next term. Once the internship is finished and the report accepted, the student will receive the "Pass" grade in the current term. The "IP" grade does not reflect in any negative way to the students' GPA — it merely labels that the student's internship and report submission are in progress.