Catalogo dei Corsi di studio

Consultations regarding the Faculty’s degree programmes for the academic year 2016/2017 took place as follows:

- N.1 meeting with organizations representing companies producing goods and services and professional associations on 10.03.2015 organized by the Dean Office for all the Faculty’s degree programmes. The Dean, the Vice Dean, the Teaching Manager, the Presidents of the Area Educational Board and Degree Programme Boards, and the following organizations took part in the meeting: 5 Emme informatica (Manager and Head of Production), BIC Lazio S.p.A. (Head of Operational Staff), Cineca - SCIA (Information and knowledge management services), Exaltech - Impresa Latina (Co-founder and Vice President), Ey (Human Resources), GSE – Energy Services Managing Company (Managing Engineer), IBM (Business Development Executive), INFO EDGE, Istituto Italiano degli Attuari (Secretary General), Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale (Coordinator of the Statistics-Actuarial Section), KYDEA – company from Latina (CTO & Co-founder), Lait Regione Lazio (sole director), NS12 (Head of Marketing & Communications), NttData (Head of HR), Ordine Nazionale degli Attuari (President), SAS (SAS Academic Program manager), Telecom Italia/TIM (Strategy & Innovation - Market & Service Scenario and Human Resources Senior Consultant).

- Cesop Communication’s survey on the knowledge and perception that Italian companies have of the training offered by the Faculty of Information Engineering, Computer Science and Statistics’ degree programmes.
Such survey was aimed to provide an initial and general feedback on two aspects of the Faculty’s degree programmes: their popularity and their quality as generally perceived.
The survey was carried out through on-line questionnaires with the CAWI ipostat-interview system (standard questions and batteries with a scale ranging from 1 to 10).
The questionnaires focused on the following areas:
- job market
- analysis of the Faculty’s courses and programmes
- hard skills and soft skills

Questionnaires were sent to members of staff with managing positions in Human Resources.
3800 companies were contacted, but only 100 questionnaires were considered valid.
Cases were not weighed by adhering to the values of reference statistics since only 73% of respondents filled in basic data (geographical area and company size).
The key resulting element is a lack of knowledge of the Faculty’s courses and programmes, which has strongly influenced the survey.

Out of the 73 interviewees who have indicated basic data, 16 of them work in small companies, 15 in medium size companies whereas 42 in large companies. 38 units were from the Northern Italy, 31 from Central Italy and only 4 from Southern Italy and the islands. Most of the respondents (25 out of 73 indicating basic data) work in an IT company.
These companies operate in the following fields: Information Technology (34,7%), Manufacturing - Transport (19,4%), Consulting and auditing (15,3%), Media and communication (9,7%), Chemistry - Pharmaceutics – Biomedicine (6,9%), Large distribution (5,6%), Public institutions (5,6%), Finance – Insurance (2,8%).

The following data emerged from consultations:

- During the meeting on 10.03.2016 participating organizations were given a handbook indicating the aims, study plan and job opportunities for all Faculty’s degree and Masters Degree programmes, including their websites. Such documentation was sent on 17.02.2016. During the meeting the following issues regarding the educational needs and job opportunities offered by the Faculty’s degree programmes were addressed:
• Suitability of educational aims and objectives and course titles

• Suitability of the professional figures in relation to job market requirements
• Expected job opportunities
• Advice regarding degree programmes’ aims, objectives and contents
• Opinions on bachelor’s programmes and on the average duration of degree programmes

• Collaborations on Internships/Thesis/Research

All organizations considered valid the topics addressed in the Faculty’s degree programmes as well as the expected job opportunities while suggesting to improve the current partial interrelation among degree programmes (for instance in interfaculty and interdepartmental courses). Participating organizations also emphasised the relevance of topics such as information technology and data science, big data, internet of things (IoT) and internet of everything (IoE), smart cities, robotics, domotics, cyber security, cognitive computing, social networking, cloud analytics, mobile networking, privacy, open source, open data, open agent, while encouraging further training in such areas given the introduction of the digital citizenship in the Public Administration. The need to increase training regarding norms and regulations particularly in statistics and actuarial programmes was similarly stressed.
As far as soft skills are concerned, big organizations and medium/small organizations had diverging opinions. According to the first, such skills should be encouraged through collaboration with companies available to offer seminars with credits to be included in the degree programmes. Small and medium organizations believe instead that providing students with a more solid basic education in bachelor’s degrees is more relevant.
All organizations emphasised the need for students to graduate in time to have good opportunities in accessing the job market and that during their academic career they start collaborating with the world of work thanks to companies’ presence within courses, through internships, research projects and collaborations while preparing their thesis. All organizations confirmed their support to put such proposals into practice.

- Cesop Communication Survey
The three areas of the questionnaire revealed that:
- 88% of the respondents foresaw to employ in 2016 graduates of the Faculty of Information Engineering, Computer Science and Statistics. Information engineer, in particular, is the most required professional figure (19.8% out of 88).
- Knowledge of courses and programmes is very limited and thus communication with companies should be encouraged (collaboration and meetings between the Faculty and companies). An interesting benchmark is the Polytechnic University of Milan, considered as a high quality university with a good communication.
- As far as courses and programmes’ contents, soft skills are considered as being more relevant than hard skills, albeit not significantly (an average of 5.58 out of 10). «The ability to collaborate with others in a constructive manner» and the «ability to adapt to organizations’ needs» are the soft skills on which the Faculty should and can have a more significant impact.

Degree Programmes’ Boards agree to welcome the following suggestions:

- continue to enhance areas such as information technology and data science, big data, internet of things(IoT) and internet of everything (IoE), smart cities, robotics, domotics, cyber security, cognitive computing, social networking, cloud analytics, mobile networking, privacy, open source, open data, and open agent in bachelor’s and Masters Degree programmes;
- encourage interrelation and contamination among different degree programmes, particularly Masters Degrees
- further encourage acquisition of soft skills through seminars with or without credits;
- reinforce basic education, particularly in bachelor’s degrees;
- improve knowledge of courses and programmes and contact with the world of work thanks to through companies’ presence within courses, internships, meetings with companies, thesis’ preparation within companies, research projects with the participation of students, particularly those of Masters Degrees.

The meeting has revealed that the Faculty’s courses and programmes are adequately structured. Functions and skills regarding the professional roles for which students are educated in the Faculty’s different programmes seem to be adequately described and are thus a clear basis to define expected learning outcomes. Moreover general and specific learning outcomes are coherent with current professional needs and in this sense graduates’ education and training satisfy society at large and job market’s needs (education demand).

Consultations with organizations – at national and international level - representative of goods production and services, and professions (Establishment of the degree programme)

In the final meeting of the consultations at University level on 22 January 2010, after considering the results of former online consultations, participating organizations positively assessed the new Sapienza’s courses and programmes on the whole. After assessing in detail Faculties’ new courses and programmes as well as modified ones as provided by D.M. 509/1999, while taking into account consultations formerly carried out by each Faculty, organizations gave a positive feedback on each new programme by judging specific educational aims and objectives of proposed programmes coherent with local educational needs.

The survey results also apply to this degree programme. Moreover, companies’ positive assessment of the course catalogue was confirmed in the following years through companies’ participation to meetings with students taking place every semester, with presentations on job and internship opportunities. From 2010 to the present day, and by maintaining a tradition started in 1999, 16 meetings have taken place with the participation of an average of 20 companies per meeting, for a total of 132 different companies, with an average of 2.32 participants per company and five companies having participated at least 10 times. Students were also briefly interviewed by participating companies during these meetings for a total of over 4,000 interviews. A round table was also organized for each of these events addressing throughout the years themes relating to emerging technologies, job market trends and transformation of professional figures in ICT.