Complete thesis - Murdoch University

context (including links with other disciplines)). Themes of interest in this discussioninclude the following, with descriptions from Mulder and Weert (2000):◦ Information Modelling – manipulating information (or its representation) isimportant precisely because we obtain understanding of situations or phenomena.Whenever you write a program or design a system to solve a problem, you are modellingthe world (or a specific domain). Critical to the discussion of informationmodelling is an appreciation of the complexity of the phenomena to be modelled.This will reveal certain inadequacies and difficulties in the very paradigm of informatics.Relevant topics are: abstract data types, object orientation, informationsystems, and databases. But also: data collection, ambiguity, effects of policy andsocial parameters, information loss, etc◦ System Design – the various fields of informatics have always been involved withthe construction of systems. Perhaps due to increasing awareness of engineeringmethodologies, more recent attention has been given to elements of good design(e.g. the emergence of the discipline of software engineering). Relevant topics are:requirements analysis, specification, design, implementation, testing and validation,maintenance, documentation, human-computer interaction, security, quality,prototyping, rapid application development, method engineering◦ Personal and Interpersonal Skills – it has been stated that the era of thesolo asocial programmer has come to an end. Through a maturing of the field,as well as the awesome complexity of the problems to be solved, effective teamworkhas become crucial in the construction of the resulting extremely complexsystems. Examples of skills required are: communication, team work, criticalthinking, leadership, working with users, interdisciplinary environments, writtenspecifications and documentation, dealing with ambiguity.• orientation – competency level. These are defined asAW AWareness (know or use) aiming at developing basic knowledge as well as skillsthat allow students to act basically literate with respect to informatics in generaland to perform standard operations using computer technology or softwarepackagesAP APplication aiming at developing a basic conceptual understanding of informaticsand of some more advanced informatics skills which allow students to applybasic informatics to other disciplines or areasDM Design and Modelling aiming at developing a general understanding and broad93