Objectives

In today's Information Society, expertise in all forms of information is required for progress in science, business, and education. The main aim of MS programme in Information Science & Technology (IST) is to design and develop information related applications using information technology by understanding relationship between digital information, people and technology. The MS programme intends to bring together Computer Science and collaborative environment of how people and society interact with digital information

MS(Information Science & Technology) Part Time (with 6 credit hours per semester)

Quaid-i-Azam University is keen to serve the community and is providing an opportunity to those who are working in the related fields and may not be able to attend a full time post graduate programme. Classes will be held in the evening after 5PM. By getting admission in the programme applicants will not only improve their qualifications but will be equipped with the latest knowledge and techniques in the field of information studies

Eligibility

M.Sc.(Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology) or 4 years BS (Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology) with experience in digital information management

Fee Structure

Structure

MS programme consists of 30 credit hours. Each course is of 3 credit hours and there are 3 compulsory courses and a number of optional courses MS(Information Science & Technology) programme with 2 options:

1. 24 credit hours for the course work and 6 credit hours for project/thesis
2. 30 credit hours for the course work

Compulsory Courses

• IST-611: Human and Information Interaction

  Overview of the course and a brief history; Types and structures of information resources; Types and structures of vocabularies; Information Interaction in Search engines, Digital libraries; Search techniques and effectiveness; Advanced searching; Web search and the invisible web; Information seeking behaviour; User modelling; Mediation between search intermediaries and users; Evaluation of search sources and results; Result Presentation to users; Keeping up: sources for life-time learning
   

• IST-631: Web Services

  Introduction to the course; foundational web technology and languages: mark-up languages; development frameworks; open source APIs for developing web services; comparison between service oriented architectures and web services; different aspects of web services and associated standards and specifications such as web services description languages; publishing; identification and discovery; services composition and orchestration; service bus; communication protocols and execution environments; web services management: performance, reliability and security

Optional Courses

• IST-620: Trends in Information Resources

  Technologies & Documentary Practices; Authors, Publishers and the Public; Structure of the Text (Typography, Punctuation, Paratext, Hypertext); Transformation: From Codex to Electronic Publishing; The Order of Texts (Digital Libraries, Web spheres, Blogospheres); Contexts of Distribution: Circulation of Value, Use, Appropriation; Networks, Communities; Regulatory Frameworks: Metacultures, Institutionalization, Standardization
  

• IST-621: Designing Usable Information Services

  Information seeking within the context of work, education, and daily living; Analysis of traditional and digital information services; Theoretical perspectives underlying information services; Emerging theories of Information services: sense making, constructing, and adding value to information; Strategies for usable services; Designing usable information resources and services; Development process for Usable information services; front-end and back-end processes for designing a usable service; information flow and process models; users' models; personas; perspective of multiple devices; role of situation and location contexts

• IST-650: Web Science

  Web history; Research methodology; Research practice in the Web; Conceptual framework for Web Models; Web in society; Information Society: Sociability; identity; trends; Collaboration; Communication: blogging, microblogging; Collective intelligence; Social structures & processes, Groups, identity, globalization, Social capital, power inequality, Virtual communities & politics;  Privacy & trust in the Web; Web & the Law; Web & Linguistics; Web & Life Sciences, Web and Psychology; Web Governance.
  

• IST-651: Intelligent Information Systems

  Introduction, Classification and Applications of IIS, Technical Challenges in IIS, Architecture of IIS, Intelligent Decision Support Systems, Intelligent Information Retrieval, Knowledge Discovery, Uncertainty Representation and Reasoning, Techniques in Artificial and Computational Intelligence: Expert Systems, Case Based Reasoning, Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic/Fuzzy Systems, Intelligent Agents, Genetic Algorithms and Optimization Concepts.
  

• IST-652: Social and Organizational Issues of Information  

  Introduction to the Course; Social implications of information technology; Perspectives about Users and Technology: Determinism, SCOT, and ANT; Current Socio-technical problems of information: Notification, Norms, and Social Implications of the Internet; Knowledge Transfer and Information Sharing; Social Network Analysis and Information Technology - Theory and Examples; The Diffusion Process; Identity and Reputation; Building and Maintaining Trust in Information Systems
  

• IST-655: Economics and Business in the Web

  Economy after the Web: knowledge and networks;Games & the Web. Web business models. Web business cases. Project management.. Project management in the web. Case studies. Microeconomic issues in the Knowledge Society: Commons, Social welfare. Macroeconomic issues in the Knowledge Society: developing world (W3F), local development. Economics of Security. Policy and Economics of the Web.
  

• IST-660: Research Methods  

  Empirical research: basic concepts; World views: Methodologies vs. methods; Research goals and nature of scientific inquiry; Research questions: Connection between data and questions; Quantitative research design; Quantitative data analysis; Research writings; Research Ethics & Human Subject Compliances; Qualitative research design; Quantitative and qualitative design: Comparison and mixed design; Qualitative data analysis
  

• IST-670: Evaluation of Information Services

  Information Services and Systems: An Overview; Delivering Satisfaction and Service Quality: Understanding customer-service, service-quality, and customer-satisfaction; Methodological issues in evaluation/performance studies; Sampling; Designing experimental studies, survey research; Value issues: external validity, outputs, inputs, impacts, etc. Framework for improving Service Quality & Customer Satisfaction over time; Qualitative measures (Case studies, Observation studies, Interviewing, Focus group interviews, etc.) used in evaluation; Satisfaction: measurement and evaluation.
  

• IST-672: e-Government  

  Introduction to the Course; Overview of trends driving the development of Government/Non-Profit web Site and Analysis; Citizen Centric Web Design; Overview of Key of e-government Practices and applications: Citizen to Government, Business to Government, Government to Government;  Policy Issues in e-government: Public Access & Government Transparency, Privacy and Security  Issues; IT Management for Governments and Non-profits.
  

• IST-675: Information Retrieval Systems (CS-675)

  Structure of IR Systems; Vector Space Models; Language Models; Evidence from Behavior; Evidence from Metadata; User Interaction; Indexing; Cross-Language Retrieval; Document Image Retrieval; Speech and Music retrieval; Photograph and Video Retrieval
  

• IST-677: Wolrd Wide Web and Society (CS-677) 

  Introduction and Overview of the course. The Internet Revolution. Placing Technologies in Perspectives. World Wide Web, Social Web. Mobile Web. Relationships on the Internet. Collaboration and Communication in Online Spaces. Blogging; microblogging. Gaming; photo/file sharing. Digital Authority and Knowledge. Digital Divide. Democracy & Politics. Privacy. Censorship. Groups and Technologies of Mediation. Networked Community. Copyright; Creative commons.
  

• IST-775: Digital Libraries (CS-775)

  Introduction to digital libraries; A brief history of Digital Library development.; Planning a Digital Library; Presenting documents; Digital Document Formats: Markup and Metadata; Metadata standards; Interoperability; Digital Preservation, new media; Case Studies of Digital Libraries; Research Issues in Digital Libraries
  

• IST-785: Selected Topics in Information Science & Technology

  The course covers advanced special topics not otherwise covered in the programme. Objective is expose student to the current developments in the field of Information Science and Technology.
  

• IST-821: Design for Usability (CS-821)

  Principles for designing the product; Development process for user interaction; Usability specifications; Design representation techniques; Prototyping; Formative user-based evaluation; Usability methods; User interaction development process.

• IST-827: Social Network Analysis (CS-827)

  Introduction to social networks; random network models; identifying connected components; giant component; average shortest path; diameter; preferential attachment; network centrality; betweenness; closeness; clustering; community structure; modularity; overlapping communities; small world network models; contagion; opinion formation; applications of social network analysis; social media networks.

• IST-831: Multimedia Retrieval Techniques (CS-831)

  Multimedia content and motivations for multimedia retrieval; Issues of multimedia Retrieval. Multimedia retrieval models; Content-based image retrieval; Content-based video retrieval; Content-based audio retrieval: audio representations, audio feature extraction; Query modalities and similarity measures; Analysis of existing multimedia retrieval systems, retrieval evaluation criteria, relevance feedback; current trends in Multimedia Retrieval.

• IST-832: Information Security  

  Information Security Overview; Anatomy of a Security Problem; Hackers & Hacking; Threats & Risks; Access Control and Authentication; Network Firewalls; Security Specifications and Standards; Security Policy Overview; Cryptology; Cryptographic Hash Functions; Electronic Voting; Web Client Security; Web Server Security; Privacy; Incident Response; Trusted Computing.
  

• IST-833: Information Privacy and Access Control (CS-833)

  Privacy, Privacy policies; Privacy enforcement; Adaptive privacy management; Access control mechanisms; Different access control models such as Mandatory, Discretionary, Role-Based and Activity-Based; Access control matrix model; Harrison-Russo-Ullman model and undecidability of security; Confidentiality models such as Bell-LaPadula; Integrity models such as Biba and Clark-Wilson; Conflict of interest models such as the Chinese Wall

• IST-834: Multimedia Communications (CS-834)

  Introduction and Recent history of multimedia technologies; Digital Image, Video and Audio Compression in Multimedia Communications; Networking Technology for Multimedia; Multimedia and the Internet; IETF Standard Protocols for Multimedia Transport; Multimedia Synchronization; Quality of Service (QoS) and Resource Management for Multimedia; Research Challenges in Real-time Multimedia transport; Multimedia conferencing and collaboration tools; Multimedia Security.

• IST-835: Ubiquitous Information Interaction (CS-835)

  information Interaction; Seminal ideas of ubiquitous computing;
  Tangibility and Embodiment; Social computing; Privacy; Critical and cultural perspectives;
  Mobility and Spatiality; Mobile Technology in the Messy Now; Infrastructure;
  Seams, seamlessness, seamfulness; Evaluating Interaction of Ubicomp systems

• IST-841: Metadata for Information Resources (CS-832)

  Overview of the course and Metadata; History of schemes and metadata communities; Functions and Types of metadata; Metadata Structure and Characteristics: Semantics, syntax, and structure; Metadata creation process models; Interoperability; Metadata Integration and Architecture: Warwick Framework; Resource Description Framework; Open Archives Initiative; Encoding Standards (Markup Languages): Introduction and history of markup; Metadata use of markup languages; Document Type Definitions (DTD); Structural metadata Data Control Standards: Resource Identifiers; Data Registries; Controlled vocabularies; Name authority control (ISAAR and FRANAR); A-Core; Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Text Encoding Initiative (TEI); Metadata Evaluation: User needs; Quality control issues; Evaluation methods; Educational Metadata: Instructional Management Systems (IMS); Learning Object Metadata (LOM); Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM); Government Information Locator Service (GILS); Visual Resources Metadata: Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA); Visual Resources Association (VRA) Core; Computer Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI)

• IST-852: Information Architecture (CS-852)

  Introduction and Overview of the course. Process of Web development; Information behaviour & the web. Content design and organization systems; Copyright issues. Labeling systems; Writing for the Web. Navigation design; Search systems. Page design; Multimedia. Web usability evaluation & testing. Accessibility for users with disabilities. Global audiences; Web standards & policies. Weblogs, Intranets, Websites for mobile devices; Web design software; Web Content Management Systems. Metadata; Search engines
  

• IST-861: Information Visualization and Presentation (CS-861)

  Overview of the course and Information Visualization; Types of Graphs and Visualizations
  Data Types and Graph Types; Design Choices in Building Basic Graphs; Multidimensional Graphing; Graphing and Basic Statistics; Perceptual Properties; How to Critique Visual Designs
  Interactive Visualization; Multidimensional Interactive Visualization; Animation; Visualization Networks; Visualization for Search Interfaces and related Fields; Visualization for Text Analysis; 3D in Visualization; Research trends in Information Visualization
  

• IST-862: Accessibility of Interactive Systems (CS-862)

  Vision of Web Accessibility (Web Accessibility Initiative); Accessibility guidelines; Different accessibility components (content developers, authoring tools, evaluation tools, contents, user agents, assistive technologies, user's characteristics); WCAG, ATAG, UAAG, EARL; Accessibility in various projects (Java Accessibility, Microsoft Enable, .); User's disabilities, human disease ontology; User interface characteristics; Modelling of user's disabilities, UI characteristics in Web Technologies; WAI-ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications.
  

• IST-866: P2P-based Information retrieval (CS-866)

  Overview of the Information Retrieval Systems; Multimedia & its characteristics; P2P Systems & its characteristics; Content searching/locating in P2P systems; Emerging coding standards for information; Architecture of P2P-based information retrieval; Privacy & security issues in P2P-based information retrieval; Current research trends in P2P-based information retrieval.
  

• IST-871: Digital Preservation (CS-871)

  Introduction to Digital Preservation. Digital objects, and their preservation; Key issues such as obsolescence of storage media, software and data formats, hardware, and Digital Curation in Digital Libraries; their solution; Benefits of digital preservation such as Legal, Accountability & protection from litigation, Protecting the long term view, Protecting investment, Reuse; Reference Models for digital preservations; Role of Metadata and Registries; Preservation Methods, approaches, and their evaluation; Selection and appraisal methodologies; Digital Curation in Digital Libraries; Audit and Certification of Preservation Processes and Repositories.

• IST-872: Mining Massive Datasets (CS-872)

  Introduction to map-reduce; large scale file systems, hadoop distributed file system (HDFS); similarity search; minhashing; locality sensitive hashing; fast data-stream processing; PageRank; link-spam detection; frequent itemset mining; clustering very large and high-dimensional datasets; dimensionality reduction: PCA, SVD; CUR decomposition.

• IST-876: Social Media Content Analysis (CS-876)

  Overview of social media; folksonomies; formal structure of folksonomies; crawling data using APIs; metadata associated with social media; context in social media; contents in social media: tags, photos, videos, status updates, bookmarks; analyzing tagging data; analyzing contents in social media: low-level image features (MPEG7), textual contents, micro blogs; concept identification; recommendation systems; event detection and prediction.

• IST-881: Visual analytics (CS-881)

  Introduction and overview of the course. Analytical Reasoning and Critical Thinking. Mental and Visualization Models. Data: Representations, Transformations, and Statistics. Visual Representations. Interaction. Communication: Production, Presentation, Dissemination. Sense Making. Collaborative Visual Analytics. Evaluation of VAST systems.
  

• IST-780: Project/Thesis (6 credits)