Conceptual and Data Modeling for a Computer Science Curriculumm

The stage of planning and creation of a Curriculum is an important step in the educational process. A Curriculum in Computer Sciences must be conceptualized in such a way that students acquire knowledge from various areas such as operational systems, programming languages, information systems, intelligent systems, communications and network security, etc. The educational process must prepare students for various professions. In addition to classical IT professions, today's IT related jobs include EcoInformatics or BioInformatics. Therefore the curriculum must offer a clear and applicable purpose of the educational process, including flexible educational programs that can be easily adjusted to the continuous changes in the job market. In addition, the curriculum must prepare students for life-long learning, including the on-hand work experience and communication skills, team work and ethics and teach them to appreciate the importance of abstraction in order to unify their theoretical and practical knowledge. This paper describes the decomposition of key concepts of the field of Computing such as: knowledge domains and their parts, academic courses, learning objects and outcomes, as well as work places and required skills. A data model has been designed together with an experimental set of data describing the Computer Science Curriculum. Several queries have been constructed that can be used to obtain information on learning aims and outcomes, required competencies on the job market, and the ability of students to find employment, as well as the possibility that the employers find candidates that match the required skills and competencies. The conceptual model was designed with a tool for knowledge representation that uses conceptual graphs. Data and queries were designed and built in a relational database.