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Why an Informatics Degree?

Article  in  Communications of the ACM · March 2010

DOI: 10.1145/1646353.1646364 · Source: OAI

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Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason Dennis Groth

University of California, Berkeley Indiana University Bloomington
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doi:10.1145/1646353.1646364 Dennis P. Groth and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason

Education
Why an Informatics Degree?
Isn’t computer science enough?

W
hat is a n informat-
ics degree, and why?
These are questions
that have been posed
to us on innumerable
occasions for almost a decade by stu-
dents, parents, employers, and col-
leagues, and when asked to prepare a
Communications Education column to
answer that question, we jumped at
the opportunity.
The term “informatics” has differ-
ent definitions depending on where
it is used. In Europe, for instance,
computer science is referred to as in-
formatics. In the U.S., however, infor-
matics is linked with applied comput-
ing, or computing in the context of
another domain. These are just labels,
of course. In practice, we are educating Informatics programs offer diverse applications, as shown in these scenes from
for a broad continuum of computing the informatics program at Indiana University, Bloomington.
disciplines, applications, and contexts
encountered in society today. auction technology, computer scien- ence, any more than statistics is owned
tists found that they needed to under- solely by faculty in statistics depart-
From Computer stand how humans would select bid- ments. Computing and computational
Science to Informatics ding strategies given the system design, thinking have become ubiquitous, and
Images courtesy of Indiana Unive rsit y Sch ool of Informatics a nd Compu ting
Computing provides the foundation and indeed how to design the system embedded in all aspects of science, re-
for science, industry, and ultimately to motivate certain types of behavior search, industry, government, and so-
for the success of society. Computing (truthful value revelation, for example). cial interaction. Consider the flurry of
education traditionally has focused on This co-design problem led to fruitful excitement about “e-commerce” in the
a set of core technological and theo- interdisciplinary collaborations be- late 1990s. Quickly e-commerce moved
retical concepts, and teaching these tween computer scientists, economists from being seen as a new field to being
concepts remains critically important. and, increasingly, social psychologists. absorbed in “commerce”: the study of
Meanwhile, advances in computing oc- Likewise, designing successful tech- business communications, logistics,
cur and are driven by the need to solve nology for trust, privacy, reputation, fulfillment, and strategy, for which the
increasingly complex problems in do- and sharing in social computing envi- Internet and computing were just two
mains outside traditional computer ronments requires both computer sci- technologies in a complex infrastructure.
science. Students, teachers, and schol- ence and behavioral science. How then does computing educa-
ars in other fields are keenly interested These interactions between problem tion need to change to respond to the
in computational thinking, and com- domain context and computational de- new reality, and more importantly, to
puting itself increasingly is informed sign are characteristic of the maturing be equipped to respond to future de-
by the challenges of other disciplines. of computer science. Computing is no velopments? We must embrace the
For example, to design good online longer owned solely by computer sci- diversity of ways in which problems

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 viewpoints

are solved through the effective use of an informatics degree, which was first
computing, and we must better under- offered in 2000. Its informatics curricu-
stand the diverse problem domains The success of lum is focused along three dimensions
themselves. computing is in that are first presented in an introduc-
The vision for informatics follows tory course: foundations, implications,
from the natural evolution of comput- the resolution of and applications. Unlike most tradi-
ing. The success of computing is in the problems, found tional computer science curricula, the
resolution of problems, found in areas introductory course does not focus on
that are predominately outside of com- in areas that are programming as the sole problem-
puting. Advances in computing—and predominately solving paradigm. Instead, a number
computing education—require greater of skills, concepts, and problem solv-
understanding of the problems where outside of computing. ing techniques are introduced and
they are found: in business, science, motivated by context-based problems,
and the arts and humanities. Students including logical reasoning, basic pro-
must still learn computing, but they gramming, teamwork, data visualiza-
must learn it in contextualized ways. tion, and presentation skills. Following
This, then, provides a definition for in- this introduction, foundations courses
formatics: informatics is a discipline sity), “Interactive Computing” (Georgia include discrete math and logical rea-
that solves problems through the appli- Tech), “Information Technology and soning, a two-course programming
cation of computing or computation, in Informatics” (Rutgers), and “Informa- sequence, and a course on data and
the context of the domain of the prob- tion Science and Technology” (Penn information representation, while
lem. Broadening computer science State). Some programs emerged pri- implications courses include social
through attention to informatics not marily from computer science roots; informatics and human computer in-
only offers insights that will drive ad- others from information and social sci- teraction. The foundations topics are
vances in computing, but also more op- ence roots. They do all generally agree similar to those in a computer science
tions and areas of inquiry for students, on the centrality of the interaction of program; however, the ordering is quite
which will draw increasing numbers of people and technology, and thus re- different, in that programming comes
them to study computation. gardless of origin they are multidisci- last rather than first. This sequencing
plinary and focus on computation in increases retention in the major be-
Informatics Programs human contexts. cause students have more time to de-
Computer science is focused on the Informatics is fundamentally an velop their technical skills.
design of hardware and software tech- interdisciplinary approach to domain At Indiana, the interdisciplinary
nology that provides computation. problems, and as such is limited nei- component of the curriculum is ac-
Informatics, in general, studies the ther to a single discipline nor a single complished through a mixture of three
intersection of people, information, domain. This is evident in another type methods: elective courses covering
and technology systems. It focuses on of diversity in such programs: some technology use and issues in specific
the ever-expanding, ubiquitous, and take a fairly broad approach, with problem domains; a required senior
embedded relationship between infor- several distinct tracks or application capstone project, aimed at solving a
mation systems and the daily lives of domains, which can range as widely “real-world” problem; and a required
people, from simple systems that sup- as art and design, history, linguistics, cognate specialization of at least five
port personal information manage- biology, sociology, statistics and eco- courses in another discipline. There
ment to massive distributed databases nomics. Other programs are limited are currently over 30 different special-
manipulated in real time. The field to a single application domain, such izations from around 20 disciplines
helps design new uses for information as bioinformatics (for example, Iowa available, including: business, fine
technology that reflect and enhance State, Brigham Young, and UC Santa arts, economics, information security,
the way people create, find, and use Cruz). Thus, informatics programs can biology, chemistry, telecommunica-
information, and it takes into account have as many differences as they have tions, and geography.
the strategic, social, cultural, and orga- commonalities. This has been reflect- The School of Information (SI) at
nizational settings in which those solu- ed in some confusion and frustration the University of Michigan has offered
tions will be used. about how to establish a community master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Informa-
In the U.S., informatics programs of interest. For example, there is an tion since 1996. In 2008 SI joined with
emerged over the past decade, though “iSchool” caucus (about 27 members), the Computer Science and Engineering
not always under the informatics and a partially overlapping CRA (IT) Division, and the College of Literature,
name, and often in different flavors Deans group (about 40 members). To Science and Arts, to offer a joint under-
that bear the unique stamp of their illustrate some of the issues, we will graduate informatics degree. To enter
faculty. Prominent examples include describe two of the broader programs the major, students are required to com-
“Informatics” (Indiana University, Uni- with which we are most familiar. plete one prerequisite each in calculus,
versity of Michigan, University of Wash- The School of Informatics and Com- programming, statistics, and informa-
ington, UC Irvine), “Human Computer puting at Indiana University Blooming- tion science. They then take a 16-credit
Interaction” (Carnegie Mellon Univer- ton offers a traditional CS degree and core in discrete math, data structures,

f e b r ua ry 2 0 1 0 | vo l. 53 | n o. 2 | c om m u n ic at ion s of t he acm 27
viewpoints

statistics, and information technol- Informatics enables students to

ogy ethics. Each then selects a several- combine passions for both computa-
course specialization track, which is in- tion and another domain. Since almost
terdisciplinary but focuses on providing all domains now benefit from compu-
depth in a particular domain: computa- tational thinking, an informatics pro-
tional informatics, information analy- gram can embrace students and con-

ACM sis, life science informatics, or social

computing. This program establishes a
centrations in art and design, history,
linguistics, biology, sociology, statis-

Journal on strong foundation, domain depth and

interdisciplinary training. However, to
tics, and economics. This diversity has
costs, of course. One is that for now,
accomplish all of this, it also imposes in the early years, students and faculty
Computing and on students the heaviest required-credit
burden of any liberal arts major.
must continuously explain “informat-
ics” to potential employers. Another is
Cultural The equal participation by the Com-
puter Science and Engineering Division
providing strong enough foundations
in both computation and another dis-
Heritage in the Michigan degree emphasizes the
ability to design an informatics pro-
cipline to produce competitive, suc-
cessful graduates.
gram as a complement to a traditional The desire to deeply understand
computer science degree; indeed, the how computing works is what has
Computer Science and Engineering Di- drawn most researchers to study com-
vision continues to offer two traditional puter science. These same individuals
CS bachelor’s degrees (one in engineer- are then invested with the responsibil-
ing, one in liberal arts). One advantage ity to develop curricular programs and
expected for the contextualized infor- teach computing to the next genera-
matics degree is higher enrollment tion of computing professionals. The
of women, and indeed, about half the current (and all future) generations of
class of declared majors is female. On students entering the university have
the downside, managing a degree that largely grown up in a world where
spans three colleges and schools is computing is so commonplace that
challenging, with natural hurdles such it is taken for granted. Many of them
as teaching budgets and credit approv- are less interested in how computing
� � � � � als across units. works than in how to make it work bet-
ter in the solution of specific problems,
JOCCH publishes papers of Looking Forward drawn from virtually all other domains
significant and lasting value in Informatics curricula are young and de- of human knowledge. There will always
all areas relating to the use of ICT veloping, but have proven popular. Indi- be a need for students who study com-
ana has over 400 students in the major. puter science. Informatics provides a
in support of Cultural Heritage, In just its first year, Michigan attracted complementary path to reach other
seeking to combine the best of 40 undergraduate majors. Evidence students for whom understanding and
computing science with real comes also from successful courses developing computation contextually
attention to any aspect of the offered outside a formal informatics is crucial to the problems that motivate
program. For example, a computer them. Like mathematics, probability,
cultural heritage sector.
scientist and an economist at Cornell and logic, in the future computation
enroll about 300 students annually in science will be taught embedded in
� � � � � interdisciplinary “Networks,” which many other areas. Indeed, informatics
counts toward the majors in Computer is a path within which the technical ac-
Science, Economics, Sociology, and In- complishments of computer science,
formation Science.a At the University of mathematics, and statistics become
www.acm.org/jocch Pennsylvania, “Networked Life” (taught embedded in the ways we interact,
www.acm.org/subscribe by a computer scientist) attracts about
200 students, and satisfies require-
imagine, and produce throughout the
scope of human experience.
ments in three majors: Philosophy,
Politics, and Economics; Science, Tech- Dennis P. Groth ([email protected]) is Associate Dean
for Undergraduate Studies and Associate Professor of
nology, and Society; and Computer and Informatics in the School of Informatics and Computing
Information Science.b at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason ([email protected]) is Associate

Dean for Academic Affairs, the Arthur W. Burks Collegiate
a See http://www.infosci.cornell.edu/courses/ Professor of Information and Computer Science, and a
info2040/2009sp/ professor of Economics and Public Policy in the School of
Information at the University of Michigan.
b See http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/
teaching/NetworkedLife/ Copyright held by author.

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