Milestones and requirements for introducing semantic web concepts in information systems programmes

Abstract

The Semantic Web as a vision for a machine-readable, metadata-intensive Web has resulted in an evolving collection of technologies and tools that deserve attention from the viewpoint of education. Nonetheless, existing approaches to curriculum design for this topic that emphasise on knowledge representation or technical issues should be complemented with an organisational vision that focuses on the value provided by Semantic Web infrastructure as a corporate asset and also by Semantic Web tools built on top of it. This paper addresses the conceptual framework that justifies Semantic Web technology in the context of information systems (IS), and provides an account of some of the main requirements and milestones needed to integrate the Semantic Web as a topic in IS programmes. Concretely, an existing IS model curricula is used to provide some tentative guidelines for such integration.