Week3: Informatics Theory–Course Activities Jinxuan Ma No unread replies. No replies. Weekly Reading:
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After reviewing the following questions and answers, write a brief discussion on the essential knowledge of informatics domain. Expert Views of Informatics Competence Dimensions
In the article by Lehner et. al (2010), which uses a series of expert interviews with “experts of informatics“ (practitioners), “experts of didactics of informatics” (teachers of teaching methodologies), and “expert informatics teachers” the research was performed to support three goals identified in project MoKoM: “(1) developing a scientific and empirically proofed competence model concerning the two domains informatics modelling and informatics system comprehension, (2) developing and testing instruments which are appropriate for competence measurement and finally (3) designing and evaluating effective learning environments for competence development.” The competence model presented and evaluated by the researchers consists of “four primary dimensions: (1) Basic Competencies, (2), Informatics Views, (3) Complexity, and (4) Non-Cognitive Skills” each of which is presented later in the article with greater descriptive detail. This rather complicated relationship of the research goals to the goals of the German secondary school curriculum for teaching informatics can be mined for some of the essential knowledge of the informatics domain. Informatics in this model consists of:
“the ability to use an informatics system (IS), the ability to comprehend the structure, processes, and individual components of an IS and the capability to design and to re-engineer an IS are important. The ability to “look at an IS from different informatics views – inner and outer perspectives” “The demands on handling complexity of informatics systems – interactivity, interconnectedness” Non-cognitive skills – “attitudes, social-communicative/cooperative skills and motivational/volitional skills.”
To summarize: know what an Informatics System (IS) is, how to use it, what are its parts, how do the parts work together, know how to design or modify an IS, know how to network IS systems, and know what human emotional and interpersonal communication competencies should be cultivated and then cultivate them.
By the standards of German educational practice, the above are considered the essential elements of the informatics domain. This is clearly a very complicated set of skills and knowledge to teach to German secondary school students. And this, it should be remembered, is within the constraints of other domains of knowledge being taught concurrently – i.e, mathematics, history, literature, etc.
Attempting to provide a more general definition of informatics, I would define it as the engineering discipline that targets information as the means for controlling a system - primarily through software – to perform work.
Let’s unpack this condensed single line definition.
By defining informatics as an engineering discipline, it separates it from the various theoretical domains that it draws upon (cybernetics, system theory, information theory, psychology, management science, etc.) and puts it primary emphasis on pragmatic problem-solving. Unlike other engineering disciplines its primary focus is on information - not energy or mechanics – and it uses technology like computers, sensors, robotics, databases, communication networks, and programming to control and coordinate single or multiple systems through the creation of software. And with this software – organized as an informatics system (IS) - it can perform useful work – which has traditionally been useful work for human beings but in the future may include machines themselves.
The emphasis on pragmatic problem-solving and the control and coordination of multiple systems makes informatics a multi-disciplinary practice and so it draws from a diverse range of bodies of knowledge and bodies of practice, as well involving large numbers of stakeholders to design, develop, diagnose, deploy, and distribute Informatics Systems (IS). And having developed in the 1950s in the United States as medical informatics, there has been a sensitivity to the “boundaries” between technology and human beings causing informatics practitioners to thoughtfully study human-computer interaction in terms of interface design and other human factors engineering.
Finally, given the influence of system theory and cybernetics, informatics takes into account all the many and varied systems that can affect intersect with an informatics system – legal, educational, emotional, political, management, business, etc.
All of the above factors combined make informatics a difficult practice to define with precision because of the breadth and depth of the domains that it draws upon, the speed with which information theory and technology evolves, and the extension of informatics to new increasing fields of knowledge/application decade by decade.
Lehner, L., Magenheim, J., Nelles, W., Rhode, T., Schaper, N., Schubert, S., & Stechert, P. (2010). Informatics systems and modelling – Case studies of expert interviews. Retrieved from https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01054698/document (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.