The slides I presented at the 2014 Web Science Education workshop, based on my accepted paper. The abstract of the paper follows: This paper considers the ways in which Web Science education can benefit from an analysis method used to gauge disciplinary representation. Three key contributions are identified: 1) driving development of the Web Science curriculum; 2) teaching Web Science, i.e. considering its evolution over time and using the method to foster comparisons of Web Science with other like fields; 3) teaching the analysis method itself as an example of a mixed methods, Web Science method. This paper addresses topic #1 of the Web Science Education activities (Web Science education programmes design).

1. The Role of Disciplinary Analysis in
Web Science Education
23 June 2014
Clare Hooper, IT Innovation Centre
cjh@it-innovation.soton.ac.uk
Web Science Education at ACM Web Science 2014

2. • How we do interdisciplinary work is important
• Quality
• Credibility
• Insight
• Communication
© University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre 2014
Motivation for
disciplinary analysis
dtc.webscience.ecs.soton.ac.uk/about-webscience-main-site/

3. 1. Collate data corpus
2. NLP to extract topics
3. Analysis: graphing,
visualisation
– Analysis of
‘communities’
– Analysis of WebSci
conference series
4. Expert survey
© University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre 2014
The disciplinary analysis
method
saffron.deri.ie

4. Contribution 1: Driving
curricula
• Identification of Web Science application
contexts
– i.e. information retrieval, social networking, semantic
web, personalised learning (from technologies to
disciplines and topics)
• Identification of disciplinary representation
– Insight into more present disciplines (i.e. computer
science, communications, psychology, sociology) and
less present disciplinary (i.e. economics, philosophy,
law)
• Assess the correspondence between highly-
ranked topics and disciplines from WebSci
publications with those that are taught
© University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre 2014

5. Contribution 2: Teaching
Web Science
• Understand Web Science via the application
contexts and its disciplinary make-up
• Examine trends in disciplinary representation
over time
– i.e. peak terms at Web Science conferences 2009 –
2011 varied greatly
• Comparison of Web Science with related fields
such as Network Science or Internet Science
© University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre 2014

6. Contribution 3: A Web
Science Method
• An approach that draws on mixed methods from
multiple disciplines
– Quantitative computer science methods (natural
language processing)
– Quantitative and qualitative sense-making methods
from network science (graphing and visualisation)
– Non-discipline specific qualitative and quantitative
methods (expert survey)
• Already taught to Web Science students
studying at Masters degree level
© University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre 2014

7. • Driving curricula
• Teaching Web Science
• A Web Science Method
© University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre 2014
Disciplinary analysis and
Web Science Education