Collaborative Geographic Information Systems

This chapter describes the origins, boundaries, and structures of collaborative geographic information systems (CGIS). A working definition is proposed, together with a discussion about the subtle collaborative vs. cooperative distinction, and culminating in a philosophical description of the research area. The literatures on planning and policy analysis, decision support systems, and geographic information systems (GIS) and science (GIScience) are used to construct a historical footprint. The conceptual linkages between GIScience, public participation GIS (PPGIS), participatory GIS (PGIS), and CGIS are also outlined. The conclusion is that collaborative GIS is centrally positioned on a participation spectrum that ranges from the individual to the general public, and that an important goal is to use argumentation, deliberation, and maps to clearly structure and reconcile differences between representative interest groups. Hence, collaborative GIS must give consideration to integrating experts with the general public in synchronous and asynchronous space-time interactions. Collaborative GIS provides a theoretical and application foundation to conceptualize a distributive turn to planning, problem solving, and decision making.

Online Learning Activities in Second Year Environmental Geography

This chapter discusses the design, technical development, delivery, and evaluation of two online learning activities in environmental geography. A “blended” approach was adopted in order to best integrate the new materials within the existing unit. The primary aim of these online activities was to provide students with opportunities to develop and demonstrate valuable practical skills, while increasing their understanding of environmental management. A purpose-built system was created in order to overcome initial technological challenges. The online activities have already been delivered successfully to a large number of students over two academic years. Evaluation and staff reflection highlight the benefits and limitations of the new activities, and the chapter concludes with recommendations for others wishing to adopt a similar approach.

Learning Geography with the G-Portal Digital Library

With the rapid growth of digital information, there is increasing recognition that digital libraries (DL) will play important roles in education, research, and work. DLs have correspondingly evolved from being static repositories of information, in which access is limited to searching and browsing, to those that offer a greater array of services for accessing, interacting and manipulating content (Agosti, Ferro, Frommholz, & Thiel, 2004; Goh, Fu, & Foo, 2002). Within the classroom environment, DLs have the potential to be useful tools for active learning in which activities are characterized by active engagement, problem-solving, inquiry, and collaboration with others, so that each student constructs meaning and hence knowledge of the information gained (Richardson, 1997). Consider, for example, a group of high school students working on a class project. Typical activities would require these students to acquire content from the teacher, gathering reference materials from the library or other sources, such as the Web, compiling and making sense of all the available information, synthesizing content, writing the project report and submitting the completed project for grading. Here, DL services could be designed to support these activities. An integrated work environment could allow students to collaboratively retrieve and store personal and group information objects relevant to the task at hand. Such a DL would therefore depart from the traditional role of facilitating access to digital content, and instead become an integral part of the learning process.

Generic Learning Materials

Academic integrity (AI) is of relevance across all academic disciplines, both from the perspective of the educator and the student. From the former perspective there is the need to increase the awareness of AI amongst the student population whilst monitoring and enforcing the rules and regulation regarding plagiarism within their institution. On the other hand, students need a full appreciation of the importance of AI and a clear recognition of the penalties for flouting the regulations in order to steer a successful passage through higher education and on into their professional career. By repurposing learning materials originally developed by the Pennsylvania State University (USA), the Universities of Southampton and Leeds (UK) have developed academic integrity guidelines to support students in their studies and provide an assessment of their understanding of AI concepts. This chapter describes the development of these learning activities and examines the technical and content issues of repurposing materials for three different institutions. It also reflects on the success of embedding the guidelines and assessment in geography programmes at two UK universities, examines the effect of using the online plagiarism detection service, Turnitin, to police plagiarism cases and summaries the lessons learnt in helping geography students to enhance their study skills.

Engaging with Environmental Management

There is an inherent antithesis between environmental management as professional practice and as concept or philosophy. Not only does this antithesis pose a problem in teaching environmental management, but also learners often have difficulty with the broad-based, multi-disciplinary nature of the subject and the value-laden nature of many environmental management decisions. Furthermore, field experience is an inherent part of environmental management and fieldwork is thus a necessary component of most environmental management modules. E-learning offers a mechanism through which to address these potential problems, through virtual practical experience and by serving as a virtual management laboratory. In this chapter, the undergraduate focus of a module on Upland Catchment Management and on environmental management is compared with e-learning for postgraduate delivery (a module on GIS for Environmental Management). The differing styles of delivery highlight the flexibility of e-learning as a vehicle for acquiring skills and knowledge, and underpin the claim that the result is an enhanced engagement with the practice of informed management.

Simple Geography-Related Multimedia

Teaching geography at university level involves students in study of complex diagrams and maps. These can be made easier to understand if split into parts. This chapter reports the work of a team writing a series of courses in geographic information systems (GIS) and their solution to the problem, which involved authoring simple multimedia animations using Microsoft PowerPoint™ software. The animations were authored by those writing the courses with little input from the multimedia Web specialist supporting the team. The techniques that the team used to produce the animations are explained, as are the nine points of best practice that were developed and how the animations were used with other non-animated content. Three sub-categories of these animations are described and explained and the issues of maintenance and reuse of the animated content is considered.

Concept Mapping to Design, Organize, and Explore Digital Learning Objects

This chapter investigates the problem of connecting advanced domain knowledge (from geography educators in this instance) with the strong pedagogic descriptions provided by colleagues from the University of Southampton, as described in Chapter IX, and then adding to this the learning materials that together comprise a learning object. Specifically, the chapter describes our efforts to enhance our open-source concept mapping tool (ConceptVista) with a variety of tools and methods that support the visualization, integration, packaging, and publishing of learning objects. We give examples of learning objects created from existing course materials, but enhanced with formal descriptions of both domain content and pedagogy. We then show how such descriptions can offer significant advantages in terms of making domain and pedagogic knowledge explicit, browsing such knowledge to better communicate educational aims and processes, tracking the development of ideas amongst the learning community, providing richer indices into learning material, and packaging these learning materials together with their descriptive knowledge. We explain how the resulting learning objects might be deployed within next-generation digital libraries that provide rich search languages to help educators locate useful learning objects from vast collections of learning materials.

Earth Observation

In our experience of earth observation (EO) online learning we highlight the usefulness of the World Wide Web in terms of its software, functionality, and user accessibility for developing and delivering a range of activities and delivery modes to both undergraduate and advanced learners. Through the mechanism of developing teaching materials and adapting them for the online classroom, EO learning can become highly interactive and well-illustrated by linking to online image processing software and relevant image data, make use of the Web’s graphical interface to reinvigorate DOS-based remote sensing programs to be more student-friendly, and with the advent of collaborative Web software, such as Wiki, provide a networked community for EO learners. In this chapter we showcase a variety of delivery modes for our EO materials—online lectures delivered within a blended learning module for the undergraduate to individual online activities (remote sensing practical exercises and an electronic learning diary) for the advanced EO learner. Examples of our learning materials are discussed in this chapter to show how adapting to online delivery and making use of Web technology has supported our teaching of EO.

Using Digital Libraries to Support Undergraduate Learning in Geomorphology

In this chapter we outline the issues involved in developing, delivering, and evaluating a Level 2 undergraduate module in fluvial geomorphology. The central concept of the module, which was designed to be delivered in a “blended” mode, involving a combination of traditional lectures and online learning activities, was the use of online digital library resources, comprising both data and numerical models, to foster an appreciation of physical processes influencing the evolution of drainage basins. The aim of the module was to develop the learners’ knowledge and understanding of drainage basin geomorphology, while simultaneously developing their abilities to (i) access spatial data resources and (ii) provide a focus for developing skills in scientific data analysis and modeling. The module adopts a global perspective, drawing on examples from around the world. We discuss the process of course and assessment design, explaining the pedagogy underlying the decision to adopt blended delivery. We share our teaching experiences, involving a particular combination of “face-to-face” lectures and online sessions, complemented by independent online learning, and supported by the associated virtual learning environment. Finally, we discuss the issues highlighted by a comprehensive module evaluation.

Census and Population Analysis

This chapter presents the development of a series of shared learning materials prepared to facilitate teaching in human geography. The principal focus of this work has been on how to use census data to understand socio-demographic phenomena such as ethnic segregation or neighborhood profiles. In this area, students are required to address a combination of substantive and methodological issues that are particularly well suited to blended learning. Much of the information describing population characteristics is itself published online and it is therefore necessary to engage with external online data resources in order to obtain and analyze information for specific study areas. Our teaching exemplars include those designed to develop students’ understanding of the data collection process, for example through the use of an online census questionnaire; analysis methods, through the provision of visualization tools to show demographic trends through time; and substantive examples, by comparison between urban social geographies in the USA and UK. Particular challenges are presented by the different nature (format, content, detail) and licensing arrangements for the census data available for student use in the UK and USA. In the UK students and researchers access census data via a research council funded program of data support units, which provides access to data from four successive censuses. In the USA open access to extensive data holdings is provided by the national statistical agency, the U.S. Census Bureau. However, the UK National Statistics offices are providing an ever-larger portfolio of datasets online and available to all, facilitating international collaboration and the types of data being provided are developing rapidly to fill the gaps between censuses.