Curriculum (2023-24)

This course is for graduates with an engineering or business background, who want to acquire both the cutting-edge IT proficiency and gaining a solid foundation in technology management.

To complete the programme, you will need to attain 30 credits of coursework, comprising of 5 required courses and 5 elective courses worth 3 credits each.

Part-time students will study in the evenings or on Saturdays in the Central or Shatin campus. Elective courses are taken by both full-time and part-time students, encouraging a culture of shared experiences to enhance the quality of learning.

• Full-time programme (1 year)*
  
  *Full-time mode will be offered under a new programme – MSc in Information Science and Technology Management from 2023 intake.
  

• Part-time programme (18 months)

  YEAR ONE

  1st TRIMESTER | September-November
  2 required courses

  2nd TRIMESTER | December-March
  1 required course
  1 elective course

  3rd TRIMESTER | March-June
  2 elective courses

  SUMMER TERM (OPTIONAL) | July
  

  —

  YEAR TWO

  1st TRIMESTER | September-November
  1 required course
  1 elective course

  2nd TRIMESTER | December-March
  1 required course
  1 elective course

Required courses (Total 5 courses / 15 credits)

• Business Intelligence Techniques and Applications

  This course emphasizes on the applications of business intelligence techniques in the era of big data. The techniques will include data preparation, dimensionality reduction, clustering, classification, market basket analysis, and performance evaluation. Business applications such as customer segmentation and financial analysis will be discussed throughout the course.

• Database and Big Data Management

  This course focuses on both business data and contemporary big data modelling and management. We will examine the different natures of data and big data, selection and representation as well as use of suitable methods and tools for storing and accessing them. Topics such as data integrity, DBMS, data warehousing, NoSQL and MapReduce are covered.

• Project Management

  This course covers the management of projects. A major focus is on how to manage various projects to successful completion within the constraints of resources and time. Included in the contents are the frameworks for proposal writing and planning, monitoring and controlling, and performance evaluation. Various project management techniques are covered including PERT/CPM and project appraisal. Case studies and field projects as well as lectures will be used as teaching methods. Graduates from this course can apply for membership of the Project Management Institute (PMI).

• Statistical Analysis

  This course is intended to equip students with the basic statistical tools required for the quantitative analysis of business problems. Topics include basic sampling and analysis of data, probability distribution functions, estimation of parameters and hypothesis testing, goodness-of-fit tests, analysis of variance, simple egression, correlation, and basic non-parametric statistical methods.

• Strategic Information Systems

  This course discusses the role of information technology (IT) in corporate strategy, along with its strategic, organizational, and technical issues in management and use. Topics include IT and business strategy alignment, IT-enabled business process reengineering, IT outsourcing, information systems planning and management, e-commerce technology and management, as well as business intelligent and analytics. Emphasis of the course is on how IT can contribute to organizational effectiveness.

Elective courses (Total 5 courses / 15 credits)

1. Elective courses offered by MSc in Information and Technology Management

• Advanced Information Systems Practicum

  This course bridges the gap between classroom and real world. It requires students to complete a real-world information systems project, in collaboration with a company or an organization. Students are required to form a project team, under the joint supervision of a teacher and an executive of the sponsoring company.

• Cyber Security

  This course provides an overview of the threats to networked organizations. Students will learn and understand the key issues associated with cyber space security, skills required to respond to security incidents, and knowledge needed to design security systems and protect security intrusions. Its coverage includes a variety of concepts and topics related to the securing of networked, cloud, and mobile processing environments.

• Data Communication and Networking

  This course discusses the concepts and principles of data communications and computer networks. It prepares students to make intelligent and informed decisions about moving voice, data, image and video between locations securely, by making them aware of the benefits, drawbacks, and effects related to various data communication technologies. Students will also learn how to make policy, design, and installation decisions related to planning and implementing data communication and network applications.

• Enterprise Resource Planning

  Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an integrated information technology to manage companywide business processes. The topics include two aspects: enterprise resource planning system and the ERP project implementation issues. This course will also introduce the evolution of ERP, concepts and application of ERP. The topics of enterprise systems will mainly brief on the core modules along the value chain such as product development, order fulfillment, production and others. Finally, the “ERP and beyond” will address how the latest developments of ERP be extended to fulfill the new demand of more enterprise initiatives. Students will be requested to work on a group project.

• Fintech and Its Applications

  Advance in information technology has already started a revolution in the financial industry. Every part of the financial service system is affected, from daily payment to long-term investment, from efficiency gain to logic transformation. The pace of change is fast. Too fast to catch, yet too critical to miss. Institutions which can leverage the new technologies gain superior market insights, create new business models, and will become the future leaders of the financial service industry. Individuals who can understand and work with FinTech open new gates for investment and career development. This course introduces FinTech and examines opportunities and challenges. It seeks to equip students with both a deep and practical understanding of emerging technology in the FinTech arena as well as the necessary coding skills to tackle future demand. We are going to cover topics such as the fundamentals of the financial service system, technology disruption, data management and visualization, financial data mining (Python), quantitative trading and artificial intelligence, crowdfunding, blockchain technology, and RegTech. Applications on practical FinTech problems are emphasized with case discussions and programming assignments. While we will work with computer codes, this course does NOT assume any programming background from students.

• Information Systems Analysis and Auditing

  This course provides students with knowledge and experience of analyzing the essential aspects of information systems in the real world. Emphases will be placed on the object-oriented analysis techniques using the Unified Modeling Language. Various key business activities will be discussed. This course will also explain the importance of business IS controls in contemporary IT governance. A business framework for the management of enterprise IS will be investigated.

• IT Law for Executives

  Information technology becomes more and more important in our business sector. Issues relating to information technology and law, such as privacy and location surveillance, digital signature, copyright, outsourcing and contracts are essential to our daily life. This course examines the link between IT law and business operations; it offers a clear picture to students who are at executive level with no related legal background. Topics will include introduction of the Hong Kong Legal System; Contract Law; Torts Law; internet impact on legal systems; IT and IP Laws in business operations and procedures.

• Managing Service Operations

  This course is designed for students to learn the latest theories, frameworks, concepts, techniques and to apply them in meeting the special challenges of managing service operations. The focus is to develop analytical thinking skills that will enable students contemplating careers in services to develop, evaluate and implement strategies for a wide range of service producing organizations. Topics will include: 1) the importance and economics of customer loyalty and approaches to build customer loyalty; 2) formulation and implementation of service strategies and the strategic service vision for greater business success; 3) management of the operational behavior of customers in service delivery; 4) design of sustainable service models that successfully incorporate a customer’s operating role; 5) analyses of customer data to inform managerial decision making; and 6) management of changes in service settings.

• Supply Chain and Logistics Management

  This course covers the concepts, insights, practical tools, and decision support systems for the effective management of the supply chain. This course will convey both the intuitions behind many key supply chain and logistics management concepts and to provide simple techniques that can be used to analyze various aspects of the supply chain and logistics management. The role of supply chain and logistics management in the age of eBusiness will be addressed. Through readings and case studies, we will identify the current and prospective supply chain practices.

• Selected Topics of Information and Technology Management

  This course is designed to investigate and to discuss selected topics of current interests in the area of information and technology management.

• Technology Startup - from Idea to Reality

  This is a practical course on entrepreneurial business management as a living skill to start, build and grow a technology enterprise. Learn by creating a new business based on the know-how and wisdom from Silicon Valley to Asia, including evaluating business opportunities, innovation, generating business model, business plan, team building, competition analysis, IP, financing, growth, Silicon Valley and Asian business culture.

• Technology Field Study

  This course consists of preparatory assignments in readings and a written study plan, followed by a five-day residential program to Silicon Valley, California or similar Sciences Park in Asia. The course is concluded with a written report and an oral presentation. The goal in taking classroom sessions abroad is to expose our graduate students to a wide spectrum of issues related to IT business, which includes research and development, company culture, and ways to manage a technology company. The issues are highlighted through lectures or seminars by university professors, and visits to world class companies or Research and development Centres. Students will have chance to discuss with top executives from these companies. Through this course, students will be able to understand the strategies companies adopted, and solutions in tackling business issues.

2. Elective courses offered by MSc in Business Analytics (subject to seat availability and approval by respective Programme Directors)

• Artificial Intelligence for Business

  This course provides a holistic overview of artificial intelligence (AI) models, as well as their mathematical and programming background. It covers, together with others, commonly used machine learning methods such as Bayes classifiers, decision tree, random forest, boosting, support vector machine, and neural network. This course emphasizes on understanding the intuition behind the methods and on applying them to business practices. It helps build hands-on experiences by using business data and R, an analytics software package. Previous coding knowledge will be needed for this course, and a decent familiarity with basic quantitative content (such as algebra and statistics) will also be required.

• Business Process Analysis and Simulation

  This course introduces knowledge used to model and analyze business processes, with an emphasis on quantitative skills. A simulation package will be introduced and will be utilized to evaluate business process performance and to facilitate the decision making on business process improvement. The knowledge learnt from the course can equip students with scientific competence and help them solve practical problems in various settings related to business process management.

• Decision Models and Applications

  This course covers the principal quantitative techniques used in solving financial, marketing, and operations problems in the private and public sectors. Topics include decision under uncertainty, Markov chain, linear programming, classical optimization, dynamic programming, and integer programming.

• Risk and Operations Analytics

  This course introduces the analysis of key issues related to the design and management of business operations using quantitative tools such as linear, integer, and non-linear programming, regression, and statistical analysis. It covers important topics such as revenue management and dynamic pricing, inventory theory, production control and scheduling, and risk management in supply chains, among others, and uses mathematical modeling, spreadsheet analysis, case studies, and simulation to deliver materials. The course introduces Monte Carlo simulations with Excel and Crystal Ball, focusing on their applications in solving business operations problems.

• Web Analytics and Intelligence

  The course focuses on the collection, analysis, and use of web data for business intelligence. Topics covered include web analytics concepts, web analytics technologies and techniques, visitor activity analysis methods, and web intelligence fundamentals. The course also evaluates practical, real-work analysis cases to demonstrate the strategic uses of web analytics for business intelligence and proper application of analytics techniques for online data optimization.

3. Other elective courses

You may take up to 6-credits-worth of elective courses offered by other Master’s programmes within CUHK Business School or Faculty of Engineering, subject to seat availability and approval by respective Programme Directors.

Notes:

• Course offering in any single academic year is based on instructor and facility availability. Some courses may be offered every alternate year.
• Some courses may be offered in the form of intensive course
• The number of seats for elective courses offered by other programmes are decided by the offering programmes.

Subject to approval, you may be exempt from taking a course if you have completed an equivalent course in your undergraduate studies and achieved a grade B or above. If you hold a valid Project Management Professional (PMP) credential with active certification status, you may apply a waiver for the core Project Management course.

You may be exempt from a maximum of 6 credits, subject to approval, and will need to replace these credits with other electives.

Overseas study trip

As part of the Technology Field Study elective course, you will have the opportunity to visit Silicon Valley in California or other similar science parks in Asia, and meet successful executives in the world’s leading corporations, start-up enterprises and universities.

Guest lecturers

To help you keep up with industry trends, we regularly invite prominent IT professionals and business leaders to speak at the School. This offers a valuable opportunity for you to gain insights from their first-hand experience and discuss current issues and ideas in person.

Orientation

Team building orientation activities are organized to develop your interpersonal skills, leadership skills as well as communication skills.

Opportunity Conference

The Opportunity Conference is an annual business technology conference organised by the Department of Decision Sciences and Managerial Economics. As an MScITM student, you can attend and gain valuable exposure to a wide spectrum of IT innovations. The conference provides a comprehensive overview of Hong Kong’s product research and development infrastructure, as well as a preview of the latest venture opportunities.

Your performance is assessed based on exams and assignments, according to CUHK’s grading system.

To graduate, you must complete the prescribed coursework and achieve a cumulative grade-point average (GPA) of at least 2.50.

Students who obtain a cumulative GPA below 2.50 in the term assessment will be put on academic probation. If the probation is not lifted after two consecutive terms, the student will be required to discontinue his or her studies.

Students who receive a grade D+ or below in a course must repeat the course or take an approved substitute course.

Dean’s List

Students in the top 20 percentile who achieve a cumulative GPA of 3.60 or above are eligible to be on the Dean’s List. These students will be issued a Dean’s List Certificate and the honour will be recorded on their academic transcripts.