We intend to develop and deliver Masters, Graduate Diploma, and Graduate Certificate courses for Science and Engineering graduates in interpreting, integrating and delivering commercial/industrial information over next generation digital network services. Presently there is a strong convergence between the means of selecting or generating and displaying scientific and technical information and World Wide Web delivered services. Students with a general or specialised scientific training will acquire skills in using the technologies of scientific computation, modelling, simulation, databases and data mining combined with data visualisation, animation and remote interactive networked delivery and collaboration. This will provide them with the opportunity to give their particular awareness and skills to the modern information handling needs of scientific and technical industry.
The course will produce students trained in industrial and commercial needs for integrating database technology, data mining, data warehousing, and computational modelling with existing and leading edge Web delivery, display, and interaction software. They will be able to mediate communications within enterprises and between enterprises and their customers, suppliers, and partners: over Intranets and the Internet. They will become advanced Web-savvy interpreters and communicators of their specialised science subject areas. They will have an introduction to IT work in industrial teams, and to the requirements of creating their own enterprises.
The innovative aspects of this course will be:
The explosion of information technology into the management and presentation of information for relatively unskilled users in industry and entertainment has opened up a shortage of skilled information workers to extract, manage and present the appropriate information. The existence of Web-based delivery and presentation and increasing amounts of smart information handling software allows information specialists to be highly effective without needing software development training. At the same time the ubiquitous World Wide Web allows commercial enterprises to start operating with electronic commerce: providing information management to support their commercial operations with customers and suppliers, as well as the initial applications of broadcasting information to the selective customer and doing what amounts to mail order over the Web.
New high bandwidth networks (eg. the TransACT rollout in Canberra) will accelerate this tendency, and require more trained professionals.
Our aim is to put our course delivery where our subject matter is also: to produce most of the teaching materials via the Web and to deliver them via the Web.
Parallel courses will be given on the evolving state of the hardware for visualisation and computing. Associated with the solid grounding in techniques will be management courses aimed directly at Web related systems, especially in IP protection, cash management, company formation and responsibilities.
We will follow a systems integration approach to the courses resulting in a rounded educational experience in this specific field.
The very nature of the Web is "outreach" and we intend to exploit this by including student projects to present the attractions of studying science to secondary students and also by visiting secondary schools, both virtually and in the flesh, to promote the possibilities offered by the technological advances of modern communication providers. We see the provision of a schools-oriented Web page and associated links as an integral part of our proposal.
Practical experience with examples of Web page construction, hardware and software and advanced networking in the research laboratory will transfer to industry by way of the students and graduates. In this we include the information service industry, as well as scientific and technically oriented industries adopting Web technology themselves.
We would in future hope to develop a course on attracting and working with venture capitalists both in Australia and elsewhere.
The leading edge of network technology is about to deliver much higher bandwidth cheaply to the industrial and household user at all levels. Using Web-based carrier services with the present medium bandwidth technology as the initial jumping off point for the courses, we will move into the forthcoming next generation higher bandwidth carrier services such as TransACT, which will be ubiquitous in metropolitan areas, and towards high bandwidth backbone Internet2 in the foreseeable future.
There are also apparent gaps opening in service needs at the low bandwidth end for rural and regional delivery - what may be termed Internet9600, appropriate Web technology suited to a conventional or mobile telephone modem - and in secure transmission both for industrial and national security. The divergence of Internet2 from Internet9600 will be an important factor in providing commercial information services across Australia's range of users, and the design of Web-delivered information services will need to take this more explicitly into account with an awareness of user psychology as well as network performance.
Students will get experience with a wide range of presentation systems: laptop, desktop, and large immersive display technologies; over modem, LAN, high performance local and remote networks.
There is a rich and growing collection of COTS (commercial off the shelf) information extraction and creation tools for industry and commerce: data mining, database, computational modelling, data visualisation. The existing and forthcoming Web-based interfaces from common presentation tools (Spreadsheet, PowerPoint etc), into simple visualisation, 2D and 3D visualisation environments, immersive virtual environments, haptics, sound, remote collaborative environments, make the challenge one of selecting and integrating the software with the information needs of industry.
In the near future these will also be integrated with high bandwidth, variable interactivity data classes such as haptics, streaming video, integrated audio.
Up to but probably less than half formal course content will be on:
There will be:
Based on students' existing science specialisation expertise, add options in courses and additional projects in
Part of the formal course content can be addressed by adapting related units which already exist as professional and technical units at 3rd and 4th year level in the ANU engineering and information technology courses. These units are typically 3, 4 or 6 credit points at present and cannot all be used in their existing format for these courses.
Organise as a group within the Dept of Computer Science (or School of Engineering and Information Technology), ANU, located within the ACSys Virtual Environments laboratory.
Systems approach to education and research in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.
The ANU Research School of Physical Sciences and ANU Supercomputer Facility have jointly developed the WEDGE virtual reality walk-in theatre, which has attracted over 5000 visitors in the last 18 months. The ANU helped the Powerhouse Museum to install a WEDGE which has been immensely popular with the public, and one is planned to go into the CSIRO Discovery centre in Canberra.
The Advanced Computing Systems CRC (joint ANU/CSIRO, with large computer industrial participants Fujitsu, Sun, Compaq) has laboratories within the Faculty, and has developed many years experience in immersive virtual environments based around Haptic devices [see "New Scientist" 13/9/99 for a description of haptic - force-feedback - interfaces]. It also has various sizes of immersive 3-D visualisation systems, and an emphasis on human computer interfaces and methods for remote collaborative use of shared environments.
The recently announced Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing will be based at the ANU and will form part of the expert environment needed for this project. There are a number of experienced research groups in underlying and complementary technology: computational, visualisation, VR, display technology and interactive media technology. The next step is to bring this expertise to bear on education and using the Web to reach the largest possible number of students. In the ACT we have the right-size community/region with high coverage, high bandwidth service and highly (computer) literate customers. The present moment is the right time for local industry to make significant inroads into the IT/Web sector in this way.
> * Compucat Boswell agree > * Millenium Boswell agree > * Wizard Boswell agree > * TransACT Williamson agree > * Andersons Cardew-Hall FEIT alumni, Sheryle Moon
We expect to need one semester to develop the initial courses for university approval and content, and to develop sufficient industrial contacts.
First enrollments mid-2000.
Target enrollments of at least 20 students after 18 months. Target Australian students with traditional Science degrees. Aim to be self-supporting after 3 years on student fees, industry support in kind, research laboratory support in kind.
We expect to obtain additional funds by teaching "in-house" courses in industry Australia wide, by selling courses to the general public via "pay to view" Web based systems, general consultancies to business and allowing external users access to advanced systems.
The course will not be a conversion course for graduates into software development, information systems, or general information technology. It will not aim to produce programmers at more than a specialised scripting language or package integration level. It will not attempt to teach any graphic design.