The Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding at a rapid rate, and it is becoming increasingly important for professionals to understand what it is, how it works, and how to harness its power to improve your business.

In this course we will focus on how the IoT works. You will learn about IoT networks and explore how ‘things’ connect to it, including whether the connection and processing is local (fog) or remote (cloud).

We will explore data networks, connection types, layer models and analyze IoT protocols and standards.

You’ll also learn how to evaluate different infrastructure components and network systems, and how to go about designing a basic network for your own IoT ideas.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding at a rapid rate, and it is becoming increasingly important for professionals to understand what it is, how it works, and how to harness its power to improve business. This introductory course will enable learners to leverage their business and/or technical knowledge across IoT-related functions in the workplace.

In the course, we will examine the concept of IoT. We will look at the ‘things’ that make up the Internet of Things, including how those components are connected together, how they communicate, and how they value add to the data generated. We will also examine cybersecurity and privacy issues, and highlight how IoT can optimize processes and improve efficiencies in your business.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to grow so will the number of privacy and security concerns and issues. As a professional working in the field, it is essential to understand the potential security risks and how to best mitigate them.

In this course, you will learn about security and privacy issues in IoT environments. We’ll explore the organizational risks posed by IoT networks, and the principles of IoT device vulnerabilities. We’ll also look at software and hardware IoT Applications for industry.

With billions of devices tracking our every move, privacy is a critical issue. We will explore and discuss the social and commercial implications the IoT brings to society.

The Internet of Things is creating massive quantities of data, and managing and analysing it requires a unique approach to programming and statistics for distributed data sources.

This course will teach introductory programming concepts that allow connection to, and implementation of some functionality on, IoT devices, using the Python programming language. In addition, students will learn how to use Python to process text log files, such as those generated automatically by IoT sensors and other network-connected systems.

Learners do not need prior programming experience to undertake this course, and will not learn a specific programming language – however Python will be used for demonstrations. This course will focus on learning by working through realistic examples.

Although there are some robots you might never get to meet (or might hope you never meet), such as those sent to space, war or rescue situations, many other robots and bots are being developed to populate people’s homes, the online spaces they frequent, their workplaces, and the social spaces they visit.

This course explores how people communicate with robots and bots in everyday life, both now and into the future.

Module 1 discusses the difficulties of defining what a robot is, as well as briefly introducing bots.

Module 2 focuses on bots, chatbots and socialbots in detail, to consider how people communicate with these programs in online spaces, as well as some ethical questions these interactions raise.

Robots in the home are the subject of Module 3, with a discussion of robots designed to act as personal assistants leading into some examples of assistive and care robots, as well as telepresence robots that allow people to interact with one another at a distance through a robot.

Module 4 considers robots at work, from the potential of telepresence robots to enable remote operations, to robots designed to share people’s workspaces, and potentially even take their jobs. One example of a public space where robots might alter people’s working and social lives greatly is on the roads with the development of self-driving vehicles, robots that need to be able to communicate with their passengers as well as with other road users.

In Disability and Digital Media , we will explore the relationship between digital technologies and disability in the Internet age.We will consider:

• the evolving impact of social media on representations of disability;
• the politics of experiencing, embodying, and discussing disability online;
• the presence of disability in memes, viral content, and online culture; and
• the role of accessibility in the digital world.

Social media and online communication dominate our daily lives in an unprecedented manner. Wireless connectivity, mobile devices and wearable technologies mean that social media is always on, always part of everyday life for billions of people across the world.

While the term ‘social media’ is barely a decade old, the story of how people started using the internet in a social manner is a much longer and more interesting one. This course will increase learners’ understanding of social media by looking at the ways networked connectivity let users become ‘social’, how this was amplified with the emergence of the web, and how social media became the default mode of the mobile web we use today.