web science

Web Science' is New IT Degree Program at RPI

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has become the first school in the country to offer a bachelor's degree in Information Technology and Web Science.

Computer science departments have steadily added courses to keep up with new technology such as programming in Java and Web development.

But as Datamation reports, there is more to computing than creating programs and Web sites. With the onset of social media, mobile applications and services, the Web is having a significant impact on society and now RPI is broadening the scope of its degree program to address these issues.

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Add the "Web" as an official, university-sanctioned science and field of study. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, N.Y., has announced it now offers the first undergraduate degree program in the U.S. devoted to the interdisciplinary field of Web Science. In addition, RPI will offer a master's concentration, in "Information Technology and Web Science."

RPI said students in the interdisciplinary degree program will investigate issues on the Web related to security, trust, privacy, content value, and the development of the Web of the future.

"The study of the Web has been siloed into certain areas. It's not that nobody studies the Web, it's that everyone does in completely different ways," RPI professor James Hendler told InternetNews.com. Hendler, one of the inventors of the Semantic Web, is part of a team of interdisciplinary scientists and engineers at Rensselaer that developed the new program.