University College Isle of Man (UCM) has overhauled its IT apprenticeship course to reflect the rapidly changing digital world, ensuring island students have the latest skills, knowledge and experience.

As part of the two-year course, students will now study two new modules in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data.

In the ‘Introduction of Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence & Intelligent Systems’, students will learn the theory surrounding Large Language modules to enable them to build a Chatbot and train it to automate tasks.

In the ‘Introduction of Big Data and visualisation’ students will build a large data set and manipulate it to create dashboards, monitor systems and understand how to forecast trends.

Other sections of the course have also been given a major update, including the Web Development module and the Networking and Cybersecurity modules.

Michael Ulyatt, head of UCM’s digital enterprise faculty, said: ‘Throughout UCM we regularly review the content of our courses to make sure that our students are learning and using cutting-edge technology, ensuring they leave ready for employment.

‘We work closely with industry to make sure that our students have the most up to date skills required by local employers.

‘This may result in small changes to a curriculum, significant changes to a course, like we have made to the IT apprenticeship, or even creating new courses that meet a recently identified demand.’

 ‘AI is of course a hot topic and is clearly something that our students need to know how to use appropriately.

‘The new module is designed to introduce the science behind machine intelligence and the philosophical debate around the ambitions of simulating human intelligence to solve real-world problems.

‘Students will be guided to appreciate AI types and applications as well as covering Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Ambient Intelligence, the major differences between top-down and bottom-up approaches to AI and understanding Machine Learning algorithms (for example Support Vector Machines, Naïve Bayes, Random Forest and K-Nearest Neighbour ) and processes, including dataset preparation.’

The apprenticeship is a part-time, two-year, Level 4 Higher National Certificate (HNC) qualification (equivalent to the first year of an undergraduate degree) for people working within the IT industry.

Applications are open for joining the course in September, with a second intake due in January 2025. To apply online visit www.ucm.ac.im