Course of studies

Your DigiBIM experience launches with our Onboarding Module. This is an active-learning, hands-on, eight day intensive session. We kick off the program by giving you the opportunity to learn and practice the leadership, communication, and collaboration skills needed to effectively innovate and digitize products, services, and processes. This module creates the foundation for you to become a change agent and boundary spanner. We also get you up to speed with key concepts related to digital literacy - the ability to use digital technologies to discover, evaluate, create, and communicate information effectively (American Library Association, 2016). Finally, this also serves as your orientation to Münster, to our University, our School of Business, and our DigiBIM program. We will build a sense of community, work, energy, and fun.

The first week of the semester will have you starting on your foundations module. This module provides core knowledge and skills related to Digital Business and Innovation Management. This module includes three courses that will meet 90 minutes each week for the entire semester Wintersemester. There are three components of this module: 1) Digital Transformation, 2) Innovation of Products, Processes, and Services, and 3) Law for Innovation and Digitalization.

In the first semester, you will also get a start on the centerpiece of the DigiBIM program, the integrative project. The first semester will be a semester of discovery - you will hear from some different partner companies about challenges they face in digital business and innovation and you will hear from some experts in the start-up ecosystem about how new ventures address digitalization and innovation. From this range of experiences, you will choose a project for which you will generate solutions in the module "Integrative Project 2" in the Summer semester.

Across both semesters, there are a series of sprints that together makeup the module Application of Digital Innovation Theory and Tools. Sprints are short, four-day block classes that work best as intensive, hands-on learning experiences, rather than a typical 15 week, 90-minute per week classroom experience. In the Wintersemester, you will have four sprints: Market Research, Design Thinking & Creativity, Sustainability & Innovation, and E-Commerce & Logistics.

In the Summer semester, your second semester of coursework, we follow a similar pattern. You will take: your second foundation module, this one is called Applied Digitalization and it has two classes, Data Analytics and Programming. You will spend a lot more time on your integrative project actually designing, testing, and refining your solution. You will have another set of sprints, as part of the module Integrative Project-Related Concepts and Skills. You will have some choices here, and they will be designed to support your projects with 'just-in-time' knowledge and skills.

Sprints are also planned for the second semester, although these will be thematically oriented to the projects and the issues arising there. With the help of a practical, workshop-based approach, specific results will be developed and processed within the courses. This could be, for example, a procedure for prototype development.

The third semester is optional for those of you with enough credits from the Bachelor. The semester requires you to design a set of experiences that gives you new perspectives on digital business and innovation management. Your semester plan needs to get approved by the program office, but it can include project work with a company either in Germany or abroad, incubation or acceleration of a startup idea, study in a different discipline such as design or engineering or computer science either here at the FH Münster, elsewhere in Germany, or abroad.

In your final semester, you will have a research seminar, complete your masters thesis and present your results in your masters colloquium.