Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University Master of Digital Innovation (Director's Page) Vlado Keselj, Director of Digital Innovation Shortcuts: MDI Orientation 2021 MDI Official MDI Orientation 2021 MDI On-line Orientation Session 2021 will be held on Tuesday, September 7, 2021, from 11:30am to 1:30pm Halifax time. Hi, 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.

It was quite 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 due to speed of transformation it was sometimes called 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.

In this second year of the MDI program, starting from September 2021, the classes are generally offered in-person, but we are also working with students who cannot make it in time this Fall to be able to attend the classes remotely.

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 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. While the MDI certificate requires IELTS score of 7.0, Health Informatics certificate requires IELTS score of 7.5.
• 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.

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 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 following three courses: HINF 6102
HINF 6210
HINF 6020

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

• 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 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
• CSCI 6509 Advanced Topics in Natural Language Processing

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

• 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

• 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 6509 Advanced Topics in Natural Language Processing
• CSCI 6515 Machine Learning for Big Data
• 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 (Vlado Keselj, vlado@cs.dal.ca). The deadline for submitting the report is the last day of classes in the given term (e.g., July 27, 2021 for Summer 2021).