Department of Informatics

Teaching-led collaborations

We maintain strong links with the South East England knowledge economy. As well as degrees that relate to particular areas of commercial activity, we have set up postgraduate courses in consultation with local companies, and have an established partnership with the Technologies division of American Express.

Full-time courses

South East England (and especially Brighton) has a high concentration of computer games companies, ranging in size from small studios to regional offices of large multinationals. In order to prepare graduates for a career in the computer games industry we run a technology-based Games and Multimedia Environments BSc degree, which combines study in areas including software development, game design, digital media, advanced computer graphics and visual effects.

Part-time courses

We have set up part-time postgraduate courses in consultation with the regional e-learning and web development sectors.

Our Postgraduate Certificate in E-Learning Design was the result of a collaboration between the University of Sussex, the University of Brighton, and members of the Brighton e-Learning Alliance (BeLA) group of companies. It was developed in response to a demand for education, training and certification from the e-learning companies. Although no longer available for external students, we redeveloped parts of the course for online delivery to University of Sussex staff.

For a number of years we ran a Postgraduate Certificate in Web Development. The course was taught in the evenings, and was intended for students without prior experience of computer programming. Created in consultation with the local digital media sector, the course covered the fundamentals of web development through to the implementation client-server web applications. It also covered key concepts and principles in human computer interaction and in object oriented programming.

Continuing professional development

American Express LogoFrom 2003 onwards, over 120 American Express employees passed through a groundbreaking collaborative industry/academic training scheme that the University of Sussex created in partnership with the company. Each intake of between 12 and 20 students worked part-time for American Express for two years, while also studying part-time for an MSc degree in Informatics.

Our relationship with American Express has since broadened to include applied research and technology transfer, through externally-funded research and development projects and doctoral projects.