diploma in informatics

[noname1234]

i'm a first year arts student who is contemplating the above diploma. is it worth the additional semester? or is proficiency in various coding languages, after doing perhaps 1 and 1/2 years of IT breadth, rather than the 3 and 1/2, sufficient to boost employability?

thank you!

[The Special One]

It certainly couldn't hurt employment prospects only add to it.

Whether or not it's needed depends on how much career progression you want and if you want to consider further study in the future.

[Alter]

If you were to complete the diploma, what would your main goal in doing so be? What area of studies do you see yourself undertaking in your Arts degree, and is computing relevant? Similarly, what kind of job do you foresee yourself doing?

A DipInfo can be an excellent idea btw - I know an Arts student (Psych major) who completed one and combined Psychology with informatics to do computational neuro/psych stuff.

[Alter]

thank you for the replies!

i'm almost entirely sure i'm to major in english and theatre studies, but with regards to another major/minor, i'm keeping my options open with psychology, creative writing or media. (one can see where my post-graduate employability prospects have given me some anxiety...) the last-mentioned is where i believe i.t. to be the most relevant, should i pick up journalism or some other form of online communications.

however, my intended career path is law (eventually), which complicates matters. i believe that the jd is another 3 years with the teaching period beginning in february, but doing the diploma would add another half-year. which i believe means i would have to wait until the next year or overload which sounds... difficult.

It seems like you've already done a fair bit of research regarding how it would look logistically. While I can't offer too much more insight as to whether it's a good decision in and of itself, I can still make a recommendation. Specifically, I think it's worth doing first year subjects for the diploma (e.g. Foundations of Computing) in first year before you enrol in the diploma. The idea behind this is that you can always cross-credit your points to the diploma from your breadth later on and decide if it's what you want to do.

As an aside, my non-expert opinion would be that IT skills would definitely be relevant for someone that works in journalism/writing (heck, probably even law - you could specialise in a field of law that has relevance to informatics). To postpone your enrolment in your informatics dip would be a similar thing to what I did when contemplating completing a DipLang. While I did four German subjects in my degree, I ended up choosing against the diploma and this isn't a decision you need make immediately.

Hope this helps. Have a nice day.

ADMIN: quote author redacted due for privacy.

[The Special One]

Informatics isn't too relevant to Law right now.

But by the time you  complete  degree it may be as technology is being utilised more and more and employers love employees who have good IT skills.

[EEEEEEP]

Informatics isn't too relevant to Law right now.

But by the time you  complete  degree it may be as technology is being utilised more and more and employers love employees who have good IT skills.

^^

There are many IT and startups at the moment that are hiring lawyers/solicitors and interns to research IP law, copyright law, data privacy laws etc.
...
https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/2017/courses/d-info/subject-options

A location-aware application for finding recommended restaurants nearby AND A social app for hosting and developing HTML5 games

As for the OP, psychology, creative writing or media would fit right in with IT and/or programming. In the production of media, it would be beneficial for you to know how to code, produce websites etc (especially since so many things involved the internet these days).

Media is so different nowadays, there are so many graphs, interfaces that need knowledge of web technologies!


LOOKS simple But It is not!

[The Special One]

^^

There are many IT and startups at the moment that are hiring lawyers/solicitors and interns to research IP law, copyright law, data privacy laws etc.

True but that's just businesses hiring lawyers which isn't anything new, this isn't an area of law where it would currently be of significant benefit to have a degree in informaticsz
...
https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/2017/courses/d-info/subject-options
As for the OP, psychology, creative writing or media would fit right in with IT and/or programming. In the production of media, it would be beneficial for you to know how to code, produce websites etc (especially since so many things involved the internet these days).

Media is so different nowadays, there are so many graphs, interfaces that need knowledge of web technologies!
(Image removed from quote.)

LOOKS simple But It is not!
(Image removed from quote.)

Idk how to partially quote so I'm just going to reload to the graph too and say that yes it is true plenty of HTML coding is involved when putting visuals online or on websites I did it during my tween years

[EEEEEEP]

Idk how to partially quote so I'm just going to reload to the graph too and say that yes it is true plenty of HTML coding is involved when putting visuals online or on websites I did it during my tween years

That wasn't HTML, that was CSS.

That's just the beginning. There's CSS, bootstrap, content management systems, data visualisations and linking to databases, etc etc. Most importantly.. web apps !

[The Special One]

That wasn't HTML, that was CSS.

That's just the beginning. There's CSS, bootstrap, content management systems, data visualisations and linking to databases, etc etc. Most importantly.. web apps !

Yes but it doesn't have to be, I was talking about generally not that particular example.

I think HTML5 would be the most popular in this day and age but there are so many programming languages these days it can be anything really.

[brenden]

Some great advice from Alter... I’d definitely consider the Diploma. I did a BA and have some writing/marketing experience. Marketing/communications/journalism, IT skills are a great advantage in all of them, particularly if you can learn to use Photoshop and other Adobe programs. And people are going to start upskilling themselves with IT more and more, so may as well get in early. A lot of us will end up doing short courses and shit like that in the next 30 years, I’d bet.