Bachelor Of Information Technology

The Wentworth Institute of Higher Education’s Bachelor of Information Technology degree is designed to give students a broad knowledge of IT with a focus on preparing them to be software developers. Students study organisational problems and user needs, design, and programming as well as other technical areas such as networking and hardware.

Throughout, there is also a focus on developing the skills students will need as IT professionals.

Students study in small classes which use a range of contemporary teaching methods including the use of computer labs, practical case studies, simulations and applied projects.

Program description

• The Bachelor of Information technology ensures that graduates have a depth of ICT technical knowledge and the skills required of an ICT professional. As a result of the degree, graduates will be able to critically analyse organisational ICT problems, solve complex real-world problems and work both individually and part of a professional team to deliver ICT services in a fast-changing global world.

Course structures
A chart/map of the course sequence by semester with core and major subject and pre-requisites

Subject description

BIT111 – Information Systems and the IT Professional

• This subject looks at aspects of information systems such as their content, different types of systems, the importance to and impact on an organisation of information systems. Students will learn about the tools and techniques for developing such systems and will also be introduced to some of the legal and ethical issues around the implementation and use of information systems.

BIT112 – Programming Fundamentals

• This subject covers the basics of programming using structured programming concepts (sequence, selection and iteration) and object-oriented programming concepts such as classes, objects and methods. Students will use an integrated development environment (IDE) to create, run and debug their source code.

BIT113 – Business Statistics

• This subject provides students with skills essential for undertaking quantitative analysis and introduces them to how statistics are used in organisations. Through the use of statistical tools, students will sample, collect, evaluate and present data to provide information important to business decision-making.

BIT114 – ICT & Computer Architecture

• This unit introduces basic areas of IT including hardware, software, communications and networks needed to design and build systems and integrate them into an organisation's IT infrastructure. It examines device management, process management, scheduling and dispatching. It includes the concepts of data storage and manipulation and user interfaces. It also develops the skills to gather requirements, source, evaluate and integrate components into a single system, and validate the system.

BIT121 – Design Thinking

• Design thinking is an effective approach for user centred problem solving and innovation. This subject shows how to use design thinking to develop ICT solutions to real-world problems. Teamwork, oral and visual communication skills are critical to pitch ideas and designs to obtain feedback from users and peers. These skills will be used in later subjects and life as an ICT professional.

BIT122 – Database Design

• Today the amount of data (structured or unstructured) that is either generated or shared around the world is measured in exabytes (or billions of gigabytes) per day. Given this ocean of data (most of which is unstructured, and so is out of scope for this subject), there needs to be an ability to manage and utilize it; especially those data that can be structured and so stored in a database. This subject looks at designing, implementing and using relational databases as the organisation’s main data management facility to either insert new data; or edit, delete or retrieve existing data.

BIT123 – Web Development

• This unit provides students with the foundational concepts of internet & websites, and their use in the business. The focus is on the design, development and testing of a website using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to meet client needs including accessibility and security and technical requirements.

BIT124 – Networking and Security

• Given an increasingly inter-connected world, the study of computer networks (their design, configuration, implementation, use and management) has become more and more important to both the organisation as well as its ICT department. Using the International Standards Organization (ISO) Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model as a foundation, the subject covers network fundamentals such as using network devices to create network topologies, networks used to communicate data from sender to receiver and other topics such as security, VPNs, firewalls and cryptography.

BIT211 -User Experience Design

• User experience design (UXD) looks at end-user interactions with computer software. Great experiences for user ICT interactions start with good UXD, which are then followed by well-designed computer interfaces. So, user experience design (UXD) can be more than human-computer interactions, including all processes that make customers’ interactions with products more satisfying and so increasing customer loyalty.

BIT212 – Advanced Programming

• This subject expands on students’ knowledge of object-oriented programming particularly inheritance and polymorphism. It also introduces some of the concepts of functional programming. Finally, it explores some of the data structures and algorithms used in either language type.

BIT221 – Software Engineering

• This subject looks at software engineering processes and models such as waterfall and agile development in the wider context of developing robust, secure systems. It looks at requirements engineering, systems modelling and UML and software architecture, object-oriented design and design patterns. Finally, it looks at software testing, test-driven development, maintenance, version control and legacy system management.

BIT222 – Advanced Database

• This subject will build on the previous knowledge covered in Database Design. It looks at: advanced SQL programming and stored procedures, scripting languages, web server software and the client-server model. It also looks at current issues related to database technology: big data and the associated topic of NOSQL database management systems; business intelligence and data warehouses; and data mining.

BIT311 – ICT Project Management

• This subject is about ICT project management skills such as identifying all necessary tasks and ordering them into an appropriate schedule; identifying resources and assigning these resources to tasks appropriately; monitoring project progress and amending/updating the project plan where needed; ensuring all project risks are identified and managed; ensuring all completed project tasks meet a minimum quality standard; and determining when a project completes (or should be terminated) and the steps that need to occur when this point is reached.

BIT312 – Advanced Web Information Systems

• This subject requires students in a team to design and develop a complex web information system using appropriate technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. It covers the process of developing a web-based information system, including object modelling, user-interface design, database design and programming.

BIT321 – Capstone Project

• This subject represents the capstone subject for the Bachelor of Information Technology. It provides an opportunity for teams of students to apply their learning gained across all subjects completed through the development of a solution to a complex real-life problem.

BIT322 – Cloud Computing

• This subject looks at cloud computing technologies such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). It examines the issues organisations face in whether or not to move information and technology infrastructure to the cloud, and, if so, to what provider, and what services.