Topical analysis of curricula in undergraduate degree programmes Dr. Peter Mooney & Graham Keane
Proposed Project Details
How do we compare the subject matter or topics which students are taught in undergraduate or postgraduate courses in Computer Science? How comparable are the syllabi of two undergraduate degree programmes in Computer Science from two different universities in the same country or in different countries? For example, does University X introduce students to a topic P in 2nd year while University Y introduces a similar topic to students in 4th year? In this project, the successful candidate will design and develop a suitable database to store and manage the course syllabus information for Computer Science undergraduate programmes. Using a mixture of automated methods and manual tagging the subjects and topics for each syllabus will be stored in the database. Information about courses and course content will be taken from publicly available web resources from Universities (initially in Ireland but then beyond Ireland). The student will develop some means of querying and visualising the data and information stored in this database. Visualisations would include answering questions such as: “Display a comparison of the syllabus from MU and UCD in undergraduate computer science” or “Display the most popular subjects or topics across all programmes”. The types of technologies used will include (but is not limited to): databases, natural language processing, topic modelling, visualisation. The project offers the successful student an exciting opportunity to work with a number of technologies which will be very beneficial to their own learning and skills development and significantly enhance their own personal CV. The project should be developed in a flexible and extendable way. With some minor adjustments the concept behind this project could be applied to other subjects such as Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, etc.
Role of the SPUR Student
The successful SPUR student will fulfil a number of roles in this project. They will be the sole software engineer and software developer for the application software. They will also undertake their own independent research (guided by the supervisor) into similar applications already available and the best data models or database structures in which to store this information. Given the student’s role as the primary engineer and developer on the project this will be particularly suitable for students who are interested in design and development of which supports research. As this project is designed as a small software development project the student will be able to experience the entire process of software development until final delivery of the project at the end of the SPUR programme.
Benefits to the SPUR Student There are many benefits to the SPUR student. These include (but are not limited to) the following: • Supervision by a very experienced research mentor and teacher who has successfully supervised SPUR projects in the past. • An opportunity to work independently and bring forth new ideas and solutions for the research problem above. • An opportunity to work on a new research problem or question which could eventually be beneficial in discussions and planning around curriculum development, subject choice, etc. • Potential to be involved in an academic paper publication at the end of the SPUR project which will detail the findings of this research work. This would be particularly beneficial to the student’s resume. • An opportunity to learn new software technologies or indeed extend and expand current skills and knowledge in these technologies. • To get a taste of the world of university research and through the SPUR programme experience in dissemination of knowledge and outputs to a wider audience.