Web Technology

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Web Science is a new discipline that addresses:
* The study of the World Wide Web as the worlds largest and most complex engineered environment
* The impact that this information system has on human society
* The changes and accommodations necessary to maintain a pro-human Web with positive societal benefits

Web Science has an ambitious agenda; it is necessarily interdisciplinary as much about social and organizational behaviour as about the underpinning technology of the World Wide Web. Its research programme targets the Web as a primary focus of attention, adding to our understanding of its architectural principles, its development and growth, its capacity for furthering global knowledge and communication, and its inherent values of trustworthiness, privacy, and respect for social boundaries.

A related one-year MSc in Web Technology focuses only on the technical aspects of the design and engineering of the Web, and is particularly aimed at computer and information technology scientists.

The Web Science taught component is structured as follows:

* Foundations of Web Science: in the first semester a 20 credit module provides the opportunity to explore the web and the issues it creates from the perspective of sociology, psychology, economics, law, linguistics and other disciplines. In the second semester, a followup 20 credit module introduces the relevant disciplinary research that provides the models and analytical techniques to address these issues.
* Web Technologies: a set of modules that provide a technical understanding of the infrastructure of the Web, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 (the original, social and semantic webs).
* Multidisciplinarity * ICT & Computational Thinking: a module that introduces non-computer-scientists to the topics that computer science deals with and to some useful tools that computer science provides for problem solving
* Social Sciences & Humanities Thinking: the opportunity for students to obtain the background knowledge required from two unfamiliar disciplines
* Interdisciplinary Thinking: a guided project that models an interdisciplinary approach to research to inform their own project research and management


* Research Methods: two modules that provide a grounding in the quantitative, experimental, qualitative and survey-based methods relevant to the practice of Web Science
* Project & Dissertation: an individual three-month project that starts the path towards the student developing their own future research questions and goals