The Computer Science master of science degree at Full Sail University provides an advanced education in computer science with a dual focus on applied programming and master’s-level research. The accelerated one-year program can prepare graduates for a variety of careers in software development and engineering.

Students entering the master’s program should have a background in programming before they start classes.

“[Incoming students] don't necessarily have to have a bachelor's in computer science or a related field, but that helps,” says Rebecca Leis, the Computer Science master’s Program Director. “They could have a bachelor's in psychology, but they're going to need to have a significant amount of programming skills as a prerequisite. [We do an] advanced programming and math assessment. That allows them to take a diagnostic exam to see if they're ready for the Computer Science master of science.”

The program kicks off with foundations in computer science research, where students will use best practices for graduate research to write a research paper, conference paper, or white paper that they can submit to professional journals for publication.

Students continue with courses in rapidly growing industries like data science and machine learning. The Data Visualization and Extended Reality class helps students use statistical models and probability theory to implement their own interactive data visualization in extended reality. Students create knowledge-based AI agents in a software solution in the Advanced Artificial Intelligence course, and they build a software solution that can learn via provided data in the Machine Learning class.

The Computer Science master’s program also emphasizes the human element of computer science and programming. In Human-Computer Interaction, students research the intersection of technology and psychology and design a software product that improves intuitiveness and usability. They implement the product and incorporate it with data visualization and extended reality in the HCI Application Development class.

The program wraps up with a final capstone project, where students put their research and programming skills together to research, plan, and design a software-based product or solution that goes beyond the basics.

“Say you’re looking to build a chatbot… A lot of people have built rule-based chatbots, but you’re trying to extend the chatbots capabilities, like can you build a conversational AI chatbot? The [master’s degree] level is going to produce something like natural language processing for text understanding, synthesis, and generation on top of just answering questions based on a limited set of keywords,” says Rebecca.

The Computer Science master’s of science program can prepare students for various programming careers, like Software Engineer, Software Developer, Artificial Intelligence Engineer, Data Scientist, Interaction Designer, UX Researcher, or Prompt Engineer.