Zero knowledge → degree → professional → expert

Level 5 Computing Degree Core (2026/27)

Data Communications & Networks, Information Systems Strategy, Professional Development, Database Systems, Systems Administration and Cyber Security — zero knowledge to degree and research-level mastery

122 structured topics, each reinforced with plain-language teaching, memory hooks, hands-on practice, retrieval, teach-back, speed recall, professional transfer and spaced review.

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How mastery works

1. Five-year-old simple

Every new term is explained without assumed knowledge and linked to a familiar picture.

2. Do it

Guided labs, typing, diagrams, configurations, queries or professional artefacts turn words into usable skill.

3. Retrieve it

No-peeking recall, teach-back and 60-second checks force the brain to retrieve instead of recognise.

4. Use it professionally

Failure modes, security, evidence, capstones and spaced repetition build degree and workplace fluency.

Course topics

  1. Start Here: What Computing Is — A five-year-old-simple map of computers, networks, data, security and jobs
  2. How to Learn Computing Automatically — MIND memory hooks, retrieval, teach-back, speed recall and spaced practice
  3. Data Communications: The Big Picture — How devices send messages from one place to another
  4. Bits, Bytes & Signals — How 0s and 1s become electrical, radio and optical signals
  5. Bandwidth, Latency & Throughput — Speed, delay and useful data explained with roads and parcels
  6. OSI Model from Zero — Seven layers as a story from app to wire and back
  7. TCP/IP Model — How the internet actually organises communication
  8. Ethernet & Frames — MAC addresses, frames and local delivery
  9. ARP & Neighbour Discovery — How a device finds the hardware address for a local destination
  10. IPv4 Addressing — Networks, hosts and dotted-decimal addressing
  11. Subnetting Mastery — Binary masks, CIDR and subnet design from child-simple to degree level
  12. IPv6 — 128-bit addressing, notation and neighbour discovery
  13. Switches & CAM Tables — How switches learn and forward traffic
  14. VLANs & Trunks — Separating logical networks on shared switches
  15. Spanning Tree — Stopping switching loops while keeping redundancy
  16. Routing Fundamentals — How routers choose a path between networks
  17. Static Routing & OSPF — Manual routes, link-state routing and convergence
  18. DHCP & DNS — Automatic addressing and human-friendly names
  19. NAT & PAT — Sharing public addresses and translating traffic
  20. Wi‑Fi & Wireless Networks — SSIDs, channels, security and roaming
  21. WANs, VPNs & Remote Access — Connecting sites and users securely across distance
  22. QoS & Traffic Engineering — Prioritising voice, video and critical traffic
  23. Packet Analysis with Wireshark — Capture, filter and explain real protocol exchanges
  24. SDN & Cloud Networking — Virtual networks, overlays, controllers and cloud VPC/VNet design
  25. Network Design & Resilience — Capacity, redundancy, segmentation, diagrams and acceptance tests
  26. Professor Lab: Network Research — Read RFCs/papers, compare protocols, critique assumptions and design an experiment
  27. Capstone: Design a Campus Network — Addressing, VLANs, routing, security, Wi‑Fi, monitoring and evidence
  28. CN5003: Information Systems, Strategy & Management — What information systems are and why organisations invest in them
  29. Business Processes & Information Flow — How work, people, data and systems connect
  30. Value Chains & Competitive Advantage — Where information systems create or destroy value
  31. Business–IT Strategic Alignment — Turning organisational goals into technology priorities
  32. Porter, SWOT, PESTLE & Five Forces — Strategy frameworks used critically, not mechanically
  33. Enterprise Architecture — Business, data, application and technology layers
  34. ERP, CRM & Enterprise Platforms — Integrated systems, benefits, risks and implementation realities
  35. Data Governance & Information Quality — Ownership, stewardship, lineage, quality and retention
  36. Cloud, Outsourcing & Vendor Strategy — Build/buy/partner, TCO, lock-in and service models
  37. Digital Transformation — Operating-model change, automation and measurable outcomes
  38. IT Governance, Risk & Controls — Decision rights, COBIT-style controls, assurance and accountability
  39. Business Cases & Benefits Realisation — Costs, benefits, NPV-style thinking, KPIs and post-implementation review
  40. Organisational Change & Adoption — Stakeholders, resistance, communication and training
  41. Ethics, Sustainability & Responsible Tech — Privacy, inclusion, environmental and societal impact
  42. Professor Lab: IS Strategy Research — Critique cases and papers, compare theories and defend a recommendation with evidence
  43. Capstone: Board-Level IS Strategy — Create an evidence-backed strategy, roadmap, risk register and benefits case
  44. CN5033: Mental Wealth & Professional Fitness — Professional identity, employability and career ownership
  45. Skills Audit & Gap Analysis — Map current evidence against target roles and degree outcomes
  46. Career Goals & Development Plan — Turn ambitions into measurable quarterly actions
  47. CV & Application Evidence — Achievement bullets, STAR evidence and tailoring
  48. LinkedIn & Professional Presence — Credible profile, networking and visible proof of skill
  49. GitHub & Technical Portfolio — Projects, READMEs, demos, issue history and evidence
  50. Teamwork & Conflict — Roles, feedback, psychological safety and resolution
  51. Leadership & Influence — Situational leadership, delegation and ethical influence
  52. Technical Presentations — Explain complex ideas to non-technical and expert audiences
  53. Technical & Behavioural Interviews — Problem solving, whiteboarding, STAR and reflective answers
  54. Reflective Practice — Gibbs/Kolb-style reflection that produces changed behaviour
  55. Professional Ethics & Codes — BCS/ACM-style duties, conflicts and responsible decisions
  56. Professor Lab: Professional Practice Research — Evaluate labour-market evidence, professional standards and learning science
  57. Capstone: Evidence Portfolio & Career Plan — A review-ready portfolio proving skills, reflection and next steps
  58. CN5000: Database Systems — Why databases exist and how structured data becomes useful
  59. Relational Model — Tables, rows, columns, keys and relationships
  60. Entity Relationship Modelling — Entities, attributes, cardinality and crow’s-foot diagrams
  61. Normalisation 1NF–3NF/BCNF — Remove duplication and update anomalies step by step
  62. SQL DDL — CREATE, ALTER, DROP and schema design
  63. SQL CRUD — SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE safely
  64. Filtering, Sorting & Functions — WHERE, ORDER BY, CASE and built-in functions
  65. SQL Joins — INNER, LEFT, RIGHT, FULL and self joins
  66. Aggregation & GROUP BY — COUNT, SUM, AVG, HAVING and analytical questions
  67. Subqueries & CTEs — Break complex questions into readable SQL
  68. Keys, Constraints & Integrity — PK, FK, UNIQUE, CHECK and referential actions
  69. Indexes & Query Plans — Why queries slow down and how indexes change access paths
  70. Transactions & ACID — Commit, rollback, isolation and concurrency anomalies
  71. Views, Procedures & Triggers — Encapsulating logic and understanding trade-offs
  72. Database Security — Least privilege, injection defence, encryption and auditing
  73. Backup, Recovery & High Availability — RPO/RTO, restore testing, replication and failover
  74. NoSQL Models — Document, key-value, column and graph databases
  75. Warehousing & Dimensional Models — Facts, dimensions, star schemas and ETL/ELT
  76. Distributed Databases & CAP — Consistency, availability, partition tolerance and replication
  77. Advanced SQL & Optimisation — Window functions, execution plans, partitioning and tuning
  78. Professor Lab: Database Research — Compare storage engines, isolation models and distributed trade-offs with evidence
  79. Capstone: Production Database Design — Model, implement, secure, tune, back up and defend a complete database
  80. CN5008: Systems Administration — What administrators do and how to change systems safely
  81. Operating System Foundations — Kernel, userspace, processes, memory, filesystems and services
  82. Linux Command Line — Navigation, pipes, redirection, grep, find and help
  83. Windows Administration — MMC, services, event logs, registry and management tools
  84. Users, Groups & Permissions — Identity, ownership, ACLs and least privilege
  85. Processes, Services & Scheduling — ps/task manager, systemd/services and scheduled jobs
  86. Storage & Filesystems — Partitions, volumes, RAID, NTFS/ext4 and capacity planning
  87. Host Networking — Interfaces, routes, DNS, DHCP and troubleshooting
  88. SSH, RDP & Secure Remote Admin — Keys, MFA, tunnels and controlled access
  89. Bash & PowerShell Automation — Variables, loops, functions, pipelines and safe scripting
  90. Directory Services & Active Directory — Domains, OUs, groups, GPO and identity lifecycle
  91. Virtualisation — Hypervisors, snapshots, templates, VMware and Hyper‑V
  92. Containers & Images — Docker concepts, isolation, registries and operations
  93. Patching & Configuration Management — Inventory, maintenance windows, automation and rollback
  94. Logs, Metrics & Monitoring — Event logs, syslog, Prometheus/Grafana concepts and alert quality
  95. Backup & Disaster Recovery — 3‑2‑1, immutable copies, restore drills and continuity
  96. System Hardening — Baselines, firewalls, secure services, CIS-style thinking
  97. Cloud Systems Administration — IAM, compute, storage, networking and automation in AWS/Azure
  98. Infrastructure as Code — Terraform/Ansible concepts, idempotence, review and drift
  99. Professor Lab: Systems Research — Benchmark, compare and defend architectures using reproducible evidence
  100. Capstone: Operate a Secure Service — Provision, harden, monitor, back up, recover and document a service
  101. CN5010: Cyber Security — CIA, assets, threats, vulnerabilities, risk and controls from zero
  102. Threat, Vulnerability & Risk — Likelihood, impact, exposure and treatment
  103. Attack Surface & Threat Modelling — Assets, trust boundaries, abuse cases and STRIDE-style thinking
  104. Authentication & Authorisation — Passwords, MFA, sessions, RBAC and least privilege
  105. Cryptography Foundations — Hashing, symmetric/asymmetric encryption and key management
  106. PKI, Certificates & TLS — Trust chains, certificates and secure transport
  107. Network Security — Segmentation, firewalls, IDS/IPS, VPNs and secure protocols
  108. Web Security & OWASP — Injection, XSS, CSRF, auth flaws and secure design
  109. Malware & Endpoint Defence — Families, persistence, EDR and containment
  110. Social Engineering — Phishing, pretexting, human controls and awareness
  111. Vulnerability Management — Discovery, CVSS, prioritisation, patching and validation
  112. Logging, SIEM & Detection — Telemetry, correlation, use cases and false positives
  113. Incident Response — Prepare, detect, contain, eradicate, recover and learn
  114. Digital Forensics — Evidence handling, timelines, disk/memory/network artefacts
  115. Penetration Testing Methodology — Authorised scope, recon, validation, reporting and remediation
  116. Cloud & Identity Security — Shared responsibility, IAM, secrets, logging and posture
  117. Zero Trust — Verify explicitly, least privilege and assume breach
  118. NIST, ISO 27001 & Governance — Frameworks, policies, controls, audit and assurance
  119. Security Risk Assessment — Business context, treatment plans, residual risk and evidence
  120. Secure SDLC & DevSecOps — Threat modelling, SAST/DAST, dependencies and release gates
  121. Professor Lab: Security Research — Critically evaluate papers, reproduce safely and communicate limitations
  122. Capstone: Defend an Organisation — Architecture, threat model, controls, detections, incident plan and board report

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