South-East European Research Centre (SEERC)

Where the different volumes of Computing Curricula 2001 refer to similar material they often adopt different structures for it, and these differences create problems in defining curricula that cross the boundaries between the different disciplines within informatics. After analysing these structures, this paper proposes a new structure for a curriculum model that is intended to cover the whole field of informatics. This model has three dimensions, for the aspects of informatics corresponding to products, processes and people, where each dimension has a lattice structure that is derived from the application of general systems theory to information systems. The principles underlying the model are discussed, and the structure of each of the dimensions is described in detail. The model is evaluated by comparisons with Denning's "Great Principles" model and with the one used in the "Computing Ontology" project, and against the criterion that its structure should enable it to model the relationships between different topics within informatics that are important to the organisation of a curriculum.