Fred Mulder

IFIP/UNESCO's informatics curriculum framework 2000 for higher education

Informatics is a relatively new discipline, nowadays of key importance in all economic processes. Many professionals are needed with different informatics backgrounds. The Informatics Curriculum Framework 2000 (ICF-2000) has been designed to cope with a large diversity in demands for informatics education in a controlled way. It offers 8 different curriculum specifications that fit 8 professional role categories. It supports systematic and controlled educational policies in which educational informatics programmes can be developed in a cost-effective way, if need be from scratch. Learning materials can be developed in the local cultural tradition. ICF-2000 has many source links to model informatics curricula from leading professional informatics societies. Through this mechanism ICF-2000 can be easily kept up to date.

What is lacking in curriculum schemes for computing/informatics?

In this paper we elaborate on the work done by IFIP Working Group 3.2 in 1997 and 2002 on various curriculum schemes for computing/informatics. It is the aim of this paper to contribute to this work by bringing in concepts and insights from curriculum research and curriculum theory. This offers an additional view on the curriculum schemes besides the more disciplinary content driven approach that mostly dominates the curriculum work. We analyze three curriculum schemes: Computing Curricula 2001 (CC2001), Informatics Curriculum Framework 2000 (ICF-2000) and Career Space (CSP) with two confronting exercises. The first exercise introduces the concepts of planned, enacted, experienced, and hidden curriculum and applies these to the process of development and implementation of curriculum schemes in general. The second exercise positions the three curriculum schemes in a generic set of curriculum components that is being used frequently in, for example, secondary education as well as in other disciplines. It appears that quite a few components are not included. The paper concludes with some suggestions for improving the development process of curriculum schemes.

Informatics in Higher Education

A changing discipline like informatics can be questioned with respect to its identity and its core concepts and skills. This concern is being expressed by the focus group papers and has led to this editorial paper. We discuss the different paradigms or views with respect to informatics that can be identified and comment on the resulting fragmented approach of the discipline. We advocate a more integral, generic and coherent approach. And we present some preliminary thoughts and notions as input for a search for the identity of the discipline, resulting in a first draft working definition for informatics as a discipline.

Specifying and comparing informatics curricula through UCSIR

UCSI is a classification system primarily aiming at informatics education and training. Since its conception in 1992 it has been used in various pilot projects in different educational sectors in the Netherlands. In this paper we discuss the origin, the scope and possible applications of UCSI. Also some results are presented of a study in which curricula of four Dutch educational programmes for informatics engineers were compared. These results both exemplify the approach and give indications for other relevant curriculum studies, especially in an international context.

Towards informatics as a discipline: search for identity

A changing discipline like informatics can be questioned with respect to its identity and its core concepts and skills. This concern is being expressed by the focus group papers and has led to this editorial paper. We discuss the different paradigms or views with respect to informatics that can be identified and comment on the resulting fragmented approach of the discipline. We advocate a more integral, generic and coherent approach. And we present some preliminary thoughts and notions as input for a search for the identity of the discipline, resulting in a first draft working definition for informatics as a discipline.

Variety in Views of University Curriculum Schemes for Informatics / Computing / ICT

Various recognized international professional organizations have recently developed university curricula concepts and models for the broad field which is referred to as computing, informatics or I(C)T (= Information and Communication Technology). The outcomes show a significant diversity, a little maybe because of the difference in terminology but much more so because of a variation in views and approaches. If one expects a strongly grown maturity of the field paralleled by paradigmatic convergence, after so many decades of development, this is a surprising result. In order to gain more insight in this matter this paper presents an assessment exercise for three such curriculum schemes. They are compared on a series of characteristic features as well as judged against a set of general guiding principles. The assessed schemes are ICF-2000 (by IFIP in commission of UNESCO), CC2001 (by ACM and IEEE-CS) and Career Space (by a European consortium of ICT industry in partnership with the European Commission).

Classifying information systems education by method engineering

Method engineering (ME) deals with the selection and assembly of situation-specific methods for information systems development. In this short paper we propose to use ME with an educational goal, that is to evaluate information systems curricula.

Modern Curriculum Development for Informatics (Computing Science)

Modem curriculum development should fulfil specific requirements that reflect developments in society. A proposed set of requirements is compared against two recent curriculum development initiatives in the area of informatics (computing science). The two initiatives are the IEEE-CS/ACM Computing Curriculum 2001 (Joint Taskforce 2001) and the IFIP/UNESCO Informatics Curriculum Framework 2000 (ICF-2000) (Mulder and van Weert 2001). Detailed comparison showed that the principles used in these two initiatives cover the proposed requirements, although not one-to-one and with different emphasis. A difference in approach between the two curriculum initiatives, concerning the linking of societal needs and student competence development, is illustrated by explaining ICF-2000 Professional Categories and Graduate Profiles.

An innovative university program on management and ICT

In the mid nineties the idea came up to introduce a University program on information and communication Technology (ICT) and management aspects as a unique operative project of the Open University of the Netherlands, together with some colleges of higher Professional education and other universities in the Netherlands. The program is meant to meet the growing demand for people mastering the mixture of ICT and management. It aims at a specific target group of students, @@@@mely experienced professionals who have already finished a higher professional education program in @@@@ormatics. Through the so-called MICT program they can @@@@end and upgrade their management & ICT knowledge, @@@@ich effort — after successful completion — is leading to a higher) university degree. In this paper we will describe @@@@ philosophy behind the MICT program and its contents. @@@@ so we will discuss its position as a university program @@@@d some of the results that have emerged to date.

Information Systems Curricula Evaluated by a Method Engineering Framework

Method engineering (ME) deals with the selection and assembly of situation-specific methods for information systems development. In this paper we use ME with a somewhat unusual perspective, that is, an educational one. We introduce a procedure for the evaluation of information systems curricula within an ME framework. Using this approach it is possible to quantitatively characterise and compare information systems curricula, showing their relative strengths and weaknesses. As an example we evaluate three model curricula (IS’90, IS’97 and ISCC’99) and analyse their differences and similarities.