A Comprehensive Representation of the Computing and Information Disciplines

摘要

In recent years, the discipline of computing has matured to the point of having distinct sub elements, each of which is developing curriculum recommendations, accreditation criteria, conferences, professional societies and publications. Specific curriculum recommendations exist for five distinct areas: (Computing Curricula 2001: Computer Science (CS-2001) and IS 2002 Model Curriculum and Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Information Systems (IS-2002)), (Computing Curricula 2004: Software Engineering and Computing Curricula: Computer Engineering) and one that will likely be finished early in 2006 (Computing Curricula: Information Technology). More broadly, recent work in the UK to identify the variety of computing related programs currently offered in British universities identified 2,400 distinct program names! This proposal is for an update of a project to keep the family of computing related disciplines together. This project is partially funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF grant 0338546, Special Project: All in the Family: A unified representation of the computing and information related disciplines), and is being run by a joint task force from several professional societies, with ACM taking the lead. The goals of the project are to provide a union of all that is computing, and various ways of organizing and visualiz- ing the breadth and depth of the combined computing and information related disciplines. This project began in late 2003, and got started in earnest in early 2004. The project has produced a reasonably comprehensive list of topic areas that make up the combined disciplines and a representation of the associations between those topic areas. The work was presented in a preliminary form at SIGCSE 2005 and was the subject of an ITiCSE 2005 Working Group. The SIGCSE session and the working group generated a good deal of comment and interest. The work has progressed substantially since then and the presentation will show the completed schema of topics and proposals for how this information should be made visible and accessible for use in curriculum planning. Thus SIGCSE 2006 is the perfect time for us both to report on our work to date, and to get valuable feedback from the community.