Athens Tech College

Front-end application development

Any website and web application consists of layers: structure, data, design, content and functionality. Front-end development deals with the aspects of a web application that a user sees and interacts with. This unit aims to provide students with necessary skills and knowledge to create an environment that will enable users to interact with and experience a web application effectively and efficiently.

Mobile application development

This unit is concerned with the design, implementation and testing of applications for mobile devices using the Android operating system. Students work at all stages of the development life-cycle from inception to testing, whilst considering usability and device capabilities for a mobile application capable of meeting a functional specification. Students are introduced to the programming environment for application development and have a hands-on approach to programming using appropriate programming languages.

Human Computer Interaction and User Experience

This unit intends to introduce students to Human Computer Interactions (HCI) principles and how they can be applied in the software development process, what is User eXperience (UX), and how these can be applied to create effective UIs for mobile and web applications. Specifically students see what usability is and how it can be measured, how HCI can be used in all phases of the software development process, how HCI can be used to evaluate the usability of a software system, how to systematically design usable UIs, what is UX and how to achieve it.

Continuous and Agile Software Engineering

This unit aims to help students acquire skills and knowledge for project-based software development in the industry. The unit provides fundamental knowledge on agile processes and continuous software quality management practices as well as hands-on experience on industry toolkits for continuous integration, deployment and delivery of software artifacts.

Advanced Software Development Techniques

This unit presents advanced software development techniques within the context of a real world business environment. It focuses on: software engineering principles; agile development processes; object oriented analysis and design techniques (using the UML notation); object-oriented principles; and well-known design practices as design patterns.

Back-end application Development

Any modern web application requires data needs to be stored and retrieved, business logic and rules need to be followed, and results need to be calculated. Often called the ‘back-end’, this behind-the-scenes functionality is crucial for any reliable and scalable web application. The unit aims to provide students with the necessary skills and knowledge in order build reliable, scalable, fast and robust back-ends for web applications.

Industrial Project

The purpose of this unit is to provide students with the opportunity to integrate and apply the skills and the knowledge they have acquired so far in their studies to a realistic problem. Students are exposed to the processes involved in the team-based development of software through real projects that are provided by companies from the software industry.

Research Skills and Dissertation Preparation

Through this unit develop their research skills and get prepared for working on their MSc dissertation. With the guidance of their supervisors, students are introduced to the research topics and techniques that are commonly employed in software engineering research. Students are exposed to and exercise the principles and practices of report writing, literature reviewing, and research designs and approaches.

Dissertation

The Department assigns one of the following:

Advanced Software Engineering

The aim of this unit is to present contemporary topics in Software Engineering. It starts with a brief overview of software engineering principles and then focuses on modern approaches to software development and management, software architecture, and advanced techniques as formal methods. Students will actively contribute to the lectures, by reviewing and presenting material on contemporary software engineering topics.

Information Security Engineering

This unit introduces the field of information security as an important area of advanced computer science and provides a broad overview of information security. The course will provide a solid theoretical foundation, as well as real-world examples, for understanding computer security. Fundamental theoretical results, foundational models, and salient examples will be covered. Security in computer data, operating systems, and networks will be covered, with emphasis on applied cryptography and program security.
Students can expect to leave the class with an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings for information and computer security, an appreciation of the strengths, weaknesses, and limitations of the major theories, and an understanding of the application of computer security theory to real-world systems. Students will also gain experience and insight into the application of theory to practical systems.

Cloud Engineering

The unit aims at introducing students to a range of foundational –as well as more advanced– topics pertaining to cloud engineering, including:

• Fundamental concepts: foundations of cloud computing, principles of cloud computing, benefits, cloud service models, cloud deployment models, virtualisation technologies.
• Cloud platforms: AWS EC2, AWS Lambda, Heroku.
• Cloud-native applications: SOA, Microservices, Docker, Kubernetes, DevOps, challenges involved.
• Quality of provisioned services: scaling, IoT, Fog Computing, Mobile Edge Computing, SLAs.
• Security issues: access control, colocation attacks, side-channel attacks.

DevOps Engineering

This unit explores a range of the most relevant topics that pertain to devops engineering scope. Main aspects and challenges of the contemporary DevOps Engineering field will be addressed by introducing relevant theory and practices in the areas of infrastructure and configuration management (on-premises and cloud), continuous pipelines, containers and orchestration. Additionally, this course provides a detailed description and hands-on experience to the cutting-edge open-source platforms that are used for the aforementioned purposes.

Contemporary Issues In ICT

The focus of this research-oriented unit is on recent advances in the area of information and communication technologies and through a series of seminars and lectures, aims to present contemporary developments and topics in this rapidly changing field. Furthermore, important issues regarding the applicability and incorporation of information and communication technologies in business environments are discussed, preparing in this way the students for the industry. In addition, students are introduced to concepts, processes and methods of research and are given the opportunity to critically analyze and evaluate the advances of a specific area within the general ICT domain.