a new "Field of Study" type could be useful

[thadguidry]

In Freebase, we had "FieldOfStudy". It was useful to see the links between OccupationalCategory and Fields of Study. This currently cannot be done because at the moment, Thing:subjectOf cannot take another Thing, only CreativeWork or Event.
And @philbarker 's Course and Educational endeavors might benefit from links between a Course and Field of Study.
The Degree proposal schemaorg/schemaorg#2099 might also benefit from a Field of Study.
Person:knowsAbout could also take a FieldOfStudy as well.
There are also many Enumeration members of MedicalSpecialty (Nursing, Dentistry, Dermatology, etc.) that could be multi-typed as a Field of Study.

There might be other uses not found above yet.

[MichaelAndrews-RM]

This sounds interesting and useful. FieldOfStudy in this usage would refer to academic discipline, is that correct? The name field of study might also suggest a research dataset.

A couple of issues that need to be considered. Is a FieldOfStudy necessarily acquired through academic study, or can it be acquired through practical experience or self-assertion? I knowsAbout time management, though I am not formally trained in that discipline. There are different levels of knowledge, formal, informal, product-oriented, and outside the mainstream (such as those who assert they are experts on non-mainstream health topics.)

The second issue relates to how to encourage some consistency in how a FieldOfStudy is expressed as a value. In some fields such as medicine, enumerated fields are possible. But there is less standardization in emerging disciplines, cross-disciplines, and minor sub-disciplines. The data could be quite noisy if not anchored in a consistent reference such as wikidata.

These issues are solvable; they just require the right guidance for data contributors.

[philbarker]

And @philbarker 's Course and Educational endeavors might benefit from links between a Course and Field of Study.

Thanks for flagging this @thadguidry

Currently Course, Learning resources and the proposed Educational and Occupational Credentials are modelled as CreativeWorks, and so something similar to Field of Study can be indicated through use of about or an educationalAlignment with an Alignment Object that has the alignmentType of 'educationalSubject'

about is probably best used for topics rather than academic disciplines, though the distinction is a fine one (it's the difference between studying chemistry and being/studying to become a chemist, where being a chemist is being part of an academic community; the academic discipline of medicine might involve studying the topic of chemistry).

Alignment Objects can be useful, but they are poorly understood and come with their own limitations.

So yes, there might be benefits in a more specific and more direct way of indicating the academic discipline of a course or other educational thing.

[thadguidry]

@MichaelAndrews-RM FieldOfStudy as we had in Freebase was not about capturing a person's knowledge. It was simply a higher class that captured an "area of knowledge". Other knowledge systems use a slightly different term, like "academic discipline" but at Freebase at the time, we understood that anyone could begin to study something, and might become an expert or not, it didn't matter, we needed to capture what the FieldOfStudy was. This is not about academics or qualifications ... "pie baking" could be a valid FieldOfStudy.

Agreed the "areas of knowlege" or "fields" are sometimes messy...but that is exactly why we began to capture them in Freebase with FieldOfStudy.

@philbarker right, you have the luxury of being modeled as a CreativeWork. Other domains do not necessarily. See above, about "This is not about academics or qualifications ... "pie baking" could be a valid FieldOfStudy." I appreciate your semi-vote of confidence here regarding benefits.

[RichardWallis]

See issue #7 for the context of the move from the main Schema.org issue tracker to this repository.