h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just had a look round in the various faculties and I am impressed with the quality of the work being undertaken. However, there appears to be some mix up between the various faculties.

For example why are design & architecture (applied science) under the arts faculty? Why is a travel guide for Paris (social science) under the faculty for science and mathematics? Why is a biography of Land Rover (history) under the applied science and engineering faculty? etc

There is a serious need to review the structure of the University and re-classify some of the work that is being done. The content of the work is however excellent.

Hi Madent,

As you've discovered, it is tricky to find academic divisions between the wide variety of project topics that are submitted to the University, so it's been quite interesting trying to rationalise the faculties accordingly. Here is some of the reasoning behind the choices:

* Design and Architecture is much more closely linked to Art than it is to Engineering. The technology and engineering aspects of the two disciplines are really only enabling technologies: the important concept is the design for humans in both cases. Projects on materials technology and structural mechanics would certianly go under Science or Applied Science, but the emphasis in Design and Architecture is very much on the design side of things.

* The History faculty is for World and Human history; if someone were searching for information on Land Rovers (much of which is expected to be technical, although the project has not been finished yet) they would be more likely to look in the Applied Science faculty, where other engineering topics are to be found. If the title had been something like 'History of the Land Rover', then we'd have a little more difficulty!

* Travel pieces are difficult to categorise because they inevitably describe history, architecture, entertainment, human geography, etc. etc. etc. The choice of Geography was more-or-less arbitrary, although Social Science is probably almost as good a choice. It rather depends how each of those faculties fills up: if we get a whole slew of projects on Physical Geography, I might be tempted to call in the movers...

The chances are that some projects will be listed under more than one faculty, just because they are, by their very nature, inter-disciplinary. The main criterion for efficient categorisation is the ability to find what you're looking for reasonably quickly. I would guess that most people would quickly look under Geography if they were after travel guides...

Hi Chris

A quick look around at how universities categorise courses (through ucas[URL removed by moderator]) and drilling down through various univesities, faculties and schools, etc. shows us both wrong for architecture, which is apparently classed as a social science.

The Land Rover article clearly states its aim as to describe the history of the vehicle. I quite agree that the technical aspects, perhaps a description of four-wheel drive principles and systems, would be within applied science. However since 4WD and Land Rover are not synonymous (eg Jeep et al) it would be wrong to include such technical details as part of a project on Land Rover. They would more properly form their own project.

Geography as it is now taught in schools and understood by half the population is not about the lcoation of places. Geography is a science concerned with amongst other things, land usage, populations, demographics, economics, climate, etc and the interaction of these. Travel guides are travel guides and are associated with leisure, not geography.

I would suggest one of two approaches:

1 Consult with UCAS or an actual university to obtain a reasonable, topical classification system, or at the very least require contributors to provide a precis of the project scope, that would allow a project to be more properly classified according to its subject and if necessary permit the scope of the project to be limited to an area within which it best fits.

2 Have a look at how a library classifies its content - the Dewey Decimal system and develop from there. After all nearly everyone is familiar with this system on a global scale.

TTFN

We can't really model the h2g2 University on any other 'real' universities because (a) the range of subject matter is very much wider for us, and (b) many projects are multi-disciplinary in their nature.

Most of the projects are allocated faculties by the researchers themselves, in fact, and the author of the Land Rovers project specifically requested that faculty, I seem to remember.

In any case, just because one organisation chooses to organise their categories in one way, it doesn't necessarily mean that other ways are 'wrong' - everyone chooses a methodology that best suits their material, and our material is quite odd! Even the Dewey Decimal system has been superseded for certain materials...

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'The University Admissions Office' to 'What is an h2g2 University Project?'.