A synthesis and ontology of all of computing

• Authors: Lillian (Boots) Cassel;Russell Shackelford;Robert H. Sloan
• Venue: Proceedings of the 36th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
• Year: 2005

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. In particular, five distinct curriculum projects range in status from completed some time ago Computing Curricula 2001: Computer Science (CS-2001)[4] and IS 2002 Model Curriculum and Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Information Systems (IS-2002)[1]), through almost completed as of the writing of this special session proposal, and very likely to be published by the time of SIGCSE 2005 Computing Curricula 2004: Software Engineering [2] and Computing Curricula: Computer Engineering [5]) to one that will likely be finished in late 2005 or early 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 [3].We are making an interim report on, and seeking input into, 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.Very roughly, the goals of the project are to provide a synthesis of all that is computing, and various ways of organizing and visualizing that synthesis. This project began in late 2003, and got started in earnest in early 2004. We anticipate completing the work late in 2005 or early in 2006. Thus SIGCSE 2005 is the perfect time for us both to report on our work to date, and to get valuable feedback from the community.