Intercultural Competences
In a global world where digitalization is always on the move, we are constantly confronted with intercultural contact. International migration also leads to different cultures coming into contact with each other, resulting oftentimes in fear, denial and even racism. To successfully deal with and overcome these challenges in our multicultural society, it is imperative to have intercultural competences. Intercultural competence is the ability to work without prejudice and in an open and tolerant manner with people from a culture different to our own, to accept other ways of thinking, feeling and negotiating and to learn from these differences. This module deals with these different concepts including certain aspects of intercultural (in)competences, their origins and manifestations. (6 ECTS Credits, first semester)
Managing international digitalized companies
The integration of disruptive technologies in business and associated digital transformation are fundamentally changing the culture, strategies and structure of companies. In addition, global added-value networks are driving internationalization and making it more important. These digital transformation and internationalization processes pose new challenges for corporate management. This module illustrates the challenges digital business models, globalized value networks and disruptive technologies pose to organizations and how they can be overcome. It also shows how sustainability management must be structured to ensure the sustainability of business models. (6 ECTS Credits, first semester)
Digital Business Models
Disruptive technologies have enabled a radical new type of business model, leading to completely new, innovative business models, or existing ones needing to be digitally transformed. These new or modified business models are faced with the need to constantly transform, driven by developments in technology. To cope with this constant need to transform, business models should regularly be checked, updated or even discarded. These rapid changes can have dramatic effects on society and the state, in particular in legal and ethical terms. This module will show you how new, innovative business models can be created and how the associated challenges for society, the state and our environment can be sustainably faced. (6 ECTS Credits, first semester)
Natural Language Processing
In this module, the student will be introduced to Natural Language Processing, starting from the historical statistical approaches to more recent Neural Network-based ones. After introducing the minimum background on language, the common basic tasks for NLP are introduced and explained. The first part of the course concentrates on usage of multidimensional implicit spaces for NLP tasks. Word2Vec starts introducing students to the NN-based methods, that are quickly categorized. Advantages and limits of using NN-based solutions are presented, together with some recent improvements, and a quick introduction to recent mainstream approaches. The following part present some application of NLP methods for well-known task and is concluded by a final session where the usage of pre-trained models is demonstrated in a simplified context. (6 ECTS Credits, first semester)
Artificial Intelligence
This module introduces the history and state-of-the-art in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the context of its increasing relevance to society and the economy and in particular its accelerated uptake by businesses in all sectors of industry. We understand AI as computational systems that perform «better, faster, cheaper» on tasks that normally require human level intelligence, by using sophisticated algorithms and leveraging vast data sets. In recent years we have seen this realized in diverse applications such as autonomous vehicles, natural language processing, computer vision, business decision support, medical diagnostics and many more. We cover these developments through case-studies and project work with a focus on how AI sustainably delivers economic and societal value in real use-cases. Since AI is such a powerful technology, we also cover important questions in AI related to ethics and regulation, as well as exploring possible future trajectories for the development of these technologies and their impact on our world. (6 ECTS Credits, first semester)
Intercultural and International Cooperation
Globalization, international value-added chains and social and societal inequalities have contributed to climate change, natural disasters and world poverty which has in turn contributed to global migration and many other pressing global issues which can only successfully be tackled by international cooperation. In the search for possible solutions, it is vital to consider cultural aspects and differences in the way we think, feel, and act. It is therefore essential to possess the necessary intercultural competences, in addition to expertise and communicative competence. This module is concerned with international cooperation as a means to combat worldwide relevant issues. (6 ECTS Credits, second semester)
Managing IT-Projects
In terms of digital transformation, IT projects are often concerned with implementing disruptive technologies or digital business models and alongside the technical challenges that many of these projects face comes also changes in corporate culture, strategies and structures. For projects to be successful, therefore, it is increasingly necessary to consider the role of change management, current and appropriate forms of communication and decision-making in the process. This module illustrates the challenges that IT project leaders will be confronted with and how to successfully deal with them by applying appropriate software and other technological instruments. (6 ECTS Credits, second semester)
Digitalization
Disruptive Technologies enable not only radically new ways of managing tasks and processes in business but also allows radical new types of business models. As a result, completely new, innovative business models can be established, or existing ones can be digitally transformed. This transformation has also had an impact on international cooperation due to the fact that digitalization crosses all borders unhindered. This module will show which disruptive technologies can be applied to tasks and processes in the value-added chain and also deals with the challenges that digitalization has posed for society and the environment and how sustainable development can ensue. (6 ECTS Credits, second semester)
Block Chain
This module introduces the students to some of the different aspects of information systems, following a by-example approach. After reinforcing some concepts in the data gathering and curation, the module introduces non-relation databases as information storage, in particular concentrating on Knowledge Graphs. The concepts and applications of Web Semantic and Distributed Ledgers offer a broad-spectrum intro to Information System and some applicable approaches used in the domain. (6 ECTS Credits, second semester)
Machine Learning and Data Science
Since the best performing AI systems are currently based on machine learning from large data sets, this module explores the technology underpinning AI more detail. We examine the difference between unsupervised and supervised learning and how they can be implemented with models such as principal component analysis, regression, artificial neural networks, and decision trees. In addition to the theoretical aspects, there is a strong hands-on approach to showing the power of these methods in real data-science applications, through the use of Python programming. There will be a data science project where students will be working on real business data using open-source ML tools to uncover insights which could be valuable for executive decision makers. In addition to these technology considerations, the module also covers the business investment decision process around investments in data-science and prepares students for managing the entire data science project life cycle. (6 ECTS Credits, second semester)
