Information organization for the union of computing related disciplines

1
Information organization for the union of
computing related disciplines

• Boots Cassel
• Villanova University

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An aside -- other projects

• NSF DUE 0532825 Personalization of Content
  Bridging the gap between NSDL and its users
  through the course website
• Student Bryan Teng
• NSF DUE 0435059 Superimposed Tools for Active
  Arrangement and Elaboration of Educational
  Resources
• Students Thejonatha Annareddy, Vamsi
  Dhannapaneni
• NSF CISE 0547299 Integrative Computer Education
  and Research in the Southwest Preparing IT
  Graduates for 2010 and Beyond
• NSF DUE 0514181 Travel Support. United States
  participation in the 8th World Conference on
  Computers in Education (WCCE 2005)

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The ontology project

• This is an ongoing project
• This talk will describe the problem, the
  progress, and the plans for future work
• In presenting this project, the team is
  requesting input. All suggestions are welcome.

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Project description

• The computing discipline is young, and is
  changing rapidly.
• This is a time when the way the changes happen
  may affect the way the field evolves for the
  foreseeable future.
• There are indications of some dangers in current
  paths.

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Some indications of the problem

• Curriculum recommendations
• Most recent effort required five volumes
  Computer Engineering, Computer Science,
  Information Systems, Information Technology,
  Software Engineering
• Other named programs exist
• Telecommunications, Network security, Interactive
  Multimedia, Information Science, others
• Benchmarking effort in Great Britain
• Identified 2,400 different names of computing
  related programs of study in the UK
• Recent updates list over 5,000

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The questions

• Is there a computing discipline?
• Are there 5,000 computing disciplines?
• Is there a common core or thread or any element
  that can be shared?
• Are there interdependencies, important
  relationships?

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Our assumption

• There are common features that link all computing
  and information related fields of study,
  research, and application.
• There are important specializations that can be
  developed independently, but each would benefit
  from connections to the others.

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Project Goal

• Produce a dynamic, interactive representation of
  the unified body of knowledge of all of the
  computing and information related disciplines
• Support a variety of tasks, including
• development of curriculum recommendations
• development of new programs of study
• validation of programs of study
• clarification of relationships among sub
  disciplines
• development of interdisciplinary programs
• classification of research contributions

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Starting point

• There exist various ways to divide and combine
  topic areas
• ACM Computing Classification Scheme
• Knowledge units of the CC2001 volumes (CS2001,
  IS2002, CE2004, SE2004, IT2005)
• Computing Research Repository (CoRR)
• others
• These overlap and sometimes contradict each other
  in the way topics are grouped, organized.

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The approach

• Team consists of leaders from
• Computer Engineering
• Computer Science
• Information Systems
• Information Technology
• Software Engineering
• Merge
• Curriculum knowledge units
• ACM computing classification scheme
• Other schemes as discovered

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Problem twist

• Early discussions to merge bodies of knowledge
• The topics are only one part of the distinction
• Different groups look at the same topics, use the
  same words, and mean different things
• How to include them all in one scheme?

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CS IM12
CS IM13
Hypertext and Hypermedia
Multimedia Informationand Systems
CS IM8
Distributed Databases
CS IM3
IS 1.6.2
CS IM7
CS IM4
Data Modeling
IS 3.3.2
Relational Databases
Transaction Processing
IS 1.6.6
IS 1.6.4
Data Models
Data Modeling
Application Interface
Integrity
CS IM5
IS 1.6.12
Database Query Languages
IS 1.6.5
Data Dictionary
Data DefinitionLanguages
IS 1.6.1
CS IM2
IS 1.6.9
DBMS features, functions, architecture
DBMS Products
IS 1.6.10
Database Systems
Database machines and servers
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Basic elements

• Over the breadth of the combined areas
• What are we about?
• Hardware
• Software
• Information
• Human related aspects

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That is not enough to describe all that concerns
the computing and information related
disciplines - There are too many things that
overlap these boundaries
HW
SW
Inf
Hu
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The core areas list is holding up, but we need
every possible combination of them.
HW Hu SW
HW
HW SW
HW Hu
HW Hu Inf
HW SW Inf
SW
Hu
Hu Inf
SW Inf
Inf
Hu Inf SW
But, that does not tell the whole story either.
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For much of what we do, a system view of the
parts is essential
HW Hu SW
HW
HW SW
HW Hu
HW Hu Inf
HW SW Inf
SW
Hu
Hu Inf
SW Inf
Inf
Hu Inf SW
System
but not enough
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The Application Context is often an inseparable
part of the field.
HW Hu SW
HW
HW SW
HW Hu
HW Hu Inf
HW SW Inf
SW
Hu
Hu Inf
SW Inf
Inf
Hu Inf SW
System
Application Context
But, there is more
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There is a social context that surrounds all that
we do. We neglect it at our
peril.
HW Hu SW
HW
HW SW
HW Hu
HW Hu Inf
HW SW Inf
SW
Hu
Hu Inf
SW Inf
Inf
Hu Inf SW
System
Application Context
But, there is more
Social Context
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Theory and Concepts
Design, Combine, Build, Test
HW Hu SW
HW
Deploy and use
HW SW
HW Hu
HW Hu Inf
HW SW Inf
SW
Administer Support
Hu
Hu Inf
SW Inf
Inf
Hu Inf SW
System
Application Context
Social Context
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Focus on System elements -- other things contract.
At another time, the center section could expand,
any subsection of the center could expand, etc.
SYSTEM
APPLICATION
Social context
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Caveat

• This is not a useable picture of the topic space
  and the interconnections among the topics.
• Rough sketch
• Shows the major elements

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Imagine possibilities

• Education domain
• Map a program of study onto the entirety of the
  disciplines.
• Explore for the underrepresented areas.
• Demonstrate the coverage of a planned curriculum.
• Illustrate the distinctions and overlaps between
  existing and proposed specialties and related
  disciplines.

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More possibilities

• Research domain
• Researcher submitting a work
• Classify it so that it can be found
• Researcher with a new idea
• Look for related work and gaps in the knowledge
  base
• Graduate student looking for a good topic
• etc.

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Education Domain

• Proficiency and Competency
• Curriculum development
• outcomes orientation.
• Dont tell me what topics you studied, tell me
  what you can do.
• How do we map specific topics to particular
  learning outcomes?

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Education Domain

• IFIP Working Group 1 in 2002 identified seven
  aspects of curriculum development
• Body of Knowledge
• Foundational Material
• Application Context
• Social Context
• Breadth and Depth
• Thematic Coherence
• Outcomes

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Education Domain

• The topic space we have drawn addresses the first
  four points.
• These are drawn from the entirety of the related
  disciplines.
• Breadth and Depth, Thematic Coherence, and
  Relationship to Outcomes remain to be addressed.

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Research Domain

• Classification
• not a static labeling
• insertion into a dynamic environment.
• Search
• not just for a particular paper or author
• what is around a topic area.
• Exploration
• for areas that are richly filled
• others that are sparse.

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The challenge

• A common representation of the topic areas at the
  core of these applications
• Probably not a single visual representation,
  though easy transfer from one to another is
  important

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What boundaries

• Discussions relative to Information Systems (in
  business) raises questions about boundaries.
• How much business should be incorporated into the
  representation?
• How much of biology if talking about
  bioinformatics?
• Easily could extend to cover all of everything!

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An opportunity

• All of everything
• Not viable option
• An API
• Allow other fields to attach their own ontology
  to this one
• Potential expansion to cover many fields
• Each managed by its own domain experts

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What to include

• The topic areas
• To what level of detail?
• Standards as a concept?
• IEEE 802.3 in particular?
• All individual standards?
• Connections
• Topic dependencies
• Related topics
• linking research work
• Developing coherent curricula
• Topics to outcomes
• Part of the Education domain

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Progress to date

• A level of understanding of what unites and what
  separates the various computing and information
  related disciplines
• A nearly complete merge of existing
  classification schemes for related topics

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Immediate goals

• Convert to a true ontology of the computing and
  information topic areas
• Process for augmenting the information base
• Defining the immediately needed interfaces
• Curriculum development
• Research Classification

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Ontology

• From Wikipedia It studies being or existence as
  well as the basic categories thereoftrying to
  find out what entities and what types of entities
  exist. Ontology has strong implications for the
  conceptions of reality.
• This is the Philosophy definition

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Ontology in CS

• In information science, an ontology is the
  product of an attempt to formulate an exhaustive
  and rigorous conceptual schema about a domain. An
  ontology is typically a hierarchical data
  structure containing all the relevant entities
  and their relationships and rules within that
  domain
• Does not have to be hierarchical.
• -Wikipedia

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Ontology

• An ontology is an explicit specification of a
  conceptualization
• When the knowledge of a domain is represented in
  a declarative formalism, the set of objects that
  can be represented is called the universe of
  discourse. This set of objects, and the
  describable relationships among them, are
  reflected in the representational vocabulary with
  which a knowledge-based program represents
  knowledge.
• Tom Gruber, Stanford University

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Ontology

• We are just beginning to think about a real
  ontology.
• So far, we have concentrated on listing the
  objects we have to work with and the kinds of
  applications that should be built around them.

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Interests

• Funded in part by the ACM Education Board and the
  IEEE-CS Educational Activities Board, we have a
  particular interest in the educational
  application of the work.
• We anticipate developing an application to run in
  the topic space that will relate topics to
  outcomes.
• More than topics will be needed in that
  application.

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Motivation

• As the computing disciplines coalesce into
  separate knowledge areas
• Lets recognize our common goals
• Lets work together to promote the computing
  disciplines
• Lets make it easier to see who does what
• Lets aid curriculum developers in innovation
• Lets see what is getting left out
• Lets keep the family of computing disciplines in
  communication and cooperation.

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Contributors

• This work is funded by a grant from the National
  Science Foundation, the ACM Education Board, and
  the IEEE-CS.
• The Team Boots Cassel (chair), Jim Cross, Gordon
  Davies, Reza Kamali, Eydie Lawson, Rich LeBlanc,
  Andrew McGettrick, Russ Shackelford, Bob Sloan,
  Heikki Topi,
• Also contributing Fred Mulder, and Anneke
  Hacquebard, Maarten van Veen
• Growing list of interested parties

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• Follow our progress
• what.csc.villanova.edu/twiki/bin/view/Main/Ontolog
  yProject
• Thank you for the opportunity to share our
  vision. Your comments and ideas will be greatly
  appreciated.
• 1 Computing The Shape of an Evolving
  Discipline. In Informatics Curricula and
  Teaching Methods. Cassel Reis eds.
  Florianopolis, Brazil July 2002.