David DiBiase

Is Distance Teaching More Work or Less Work

Abstract This article presents data collected in a year‐long study in which the author and his assistants kept detailed records of their time spent teaching and maintaining two comparable university courses. One course was offered online to adult professionals away from campus, the other offered to undergraduates in traditional classrooms on campus. The courses had similar learning objectives, similar student activities, and equally favorable ratings by students. Both were mature courses that required only routine maintenance and revision. The data do not support the widely held belief that teaching an asynchronous online course requires more effort than teaching a comparable synchronous classroom course. Although the distance course required more frequent attention, the total teaching and maintenance time spent per student was less than that required to teach and maintain the classroom course. Categories of teaching tasks are also compared.

Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of Multimedia Resources for Geography and Earth Science Education.

Abstract Geography and earth science educators are simultaneously faced with increasing scrutiny of teaching, new educational standards and a plethora of new teaching methods such as computer multimedia. While there have been calls for the use of multimedia in geography and earth science education, few explicit guidelines detail how to actually begin designing, implementing and evaluating educational multimedia in the classroom. This paper describes an approach to educational multimedia design focused on a coherent set of multimedia design standards informed by an array of evaluation functions. Such design and evaluation standards should be shaped by broader educational and content (geography and earth science) goals. Our approach to design and evaluation serves as a fundamental step in examining the possibilities of multimedia in the geography and earth science classroom.

Internationalizing Professional Development in Geography through Distance Education

This paper assesses the value and relevance of geography education in the realm of professional development. It explores the potential of distance education to support lifelong learners through courses or modules that operate across international boundaries and incorporate materials from local and global contexts. The authors argue that Internet-enabled distance education offers the potential to extend access to many prospective students who are unlikely or unable to participate in full-time residential courses, and that distance education can facilitate international collaboration among educators and educational institutions. A case is made for an internationalized programme of study for continuing adult education, as opposed to the primary, secondary and higher education sectors that are the focus of most existing geographical education programmes. Next, the authors document the ways in which recent commitments to internationalizing teaching and learning in geography have brought us to the point where professional development of lifelong learners is demonstrable, particularly in the fields of geographic information technologies and teacher professional development. They outline some of the main challenges that must be addressed if the potential of distance education as an enabling tool for professional development in geography is to be fulfilled: specifically, collaborative development and delivery of curricula and the articulation of quality assurance standards and certification agreements among participating institutions.

Building rich, semantic descriptions of learning activities to facilitate reuse in digital libraries

This paper describes efforts to extend educational descriptions of learning objects to enable semantic search for suitable resources held within digital libraries and cyberinfrastructure, and describes some further advantages that accrue from the use of formal description languages (ontologies) to describe both pedagogy and domain content. These advantages include: semantic browsing and visualization of learning object contents, advanced search capabilities linking to several different online collections, easy extension of learning objects with external content added by learners and educators, and utilization of the many rich models of education and educational domains now available as ontologies. As well as conceptual justifications and descriptions of our work, we provide examples throughout to concretize the ideas presented, using learning objects developed for college-level education in geography and the geosciences. We conclude with some thoughts on the further possibilities that arise from the application of detailed semantics, and associated reasoning, in the pursuit of genuinely reusable educational content that integrates more closely with community research activities such as exemplified by e-science.

Distance Education in Geographic Information Science: Symposium and an Informal Survey.

The US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2002) defines distance education as “education or training courses delivered to remote (off-campus) location(s) via audio, video (live or prerecorded), or computer technologies, including both synchronous and asynchronous instruction” (NCES, 2000, p. 2). This definition excludes correspondence courses, by which colleges, universities and commercial enterprises have delivered educational opportunities via postal services to distant learners in many parts of the world for a century or more. While such a definition may seem too exclusive, it does highlight the technological innovations that, combined with unprecedented economic challenges faced by higher education institutions, have led to rapid growth in distance education over the past decade. Educators are not of one mind about distance education, of course. Some celebrate the potential to expand access to higher education to lifelong learners not well served by traditional place-bound courses (e.g. Kellogg Commission, 1999). Others foresee revolutionary impact not only in expanding access to higher education but also in reforming it, by leveraging computers and networks potentially to create a new, more active more student-centered pedagogy (e.g. Benyon et al., 1997; Browning & Williams, 1997). Still others view distance education as evidence of a regressive trend toward the automation of higher education and the commercialization of the academy (e.g. Gober, 1998; Noble, 1998). While a recent study has found that equivalent learning activities can be equally effective for both online and face-to-face courses (Neuhauser, 2002),

Teaching Geographic Information Science and Technology in Higher Education: Unwin/Teaching Geographic Information Science and Technology in Higher Education

Book synopsis: Geographic Information Science and Technology (GISc&T) has been at the forefront of education innovation in geography and allied sciences for two decades. Teaching Geographic Information Science and Technology in Higher Education is an invaluable reference for educators and researchers working in GISc&T, providing coverage of the latest innovations in the field and discussion of what the future holds for GI Science education in the years to come. This book clearly documents teaching innovations and takes stock of lessons learned from experience in the discipline. The content will be of interest both to educators and researchers working in GISc&T, and to educators in other related fields. More importantly, this book also anticipates some of the opportunities and challenges in GI Science and Technology education that may arise in the next decade. As such it will be of interest to chairs, deans, administrators, faculty in other subfields, and educators in general.

Designing Animated Maps For A Multimedia Encyclopedia

Between January and June 1993, GeoSystems-an R.R. Donnelley and Sons Company-compiled and produced thirty animated maps for the 1994 edition of the New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Animated subjects requested by Grolier included the American Revolutionary War, World War II, and Magellans circumnavigation of the world. I collaborated with GeoSystems as a private consultant, providing design specifications for the series. In this paper, I discuss some of the cartographic challenges GeoSystems faced in condensing these complex events into brief (4-5 minute) animations.

Freeing CP: GIS&T and NACIS in the Open Educational Resources Movement

This article positions higher education in geographic information science and technology (GIS&T), including cartography, in relation to the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. After defining OER and the movement it denotes I compare several initiatives designed to promote free sharing of GIS&T-related educational resources and, in one special case, free provision of graduate education. Finally I consider a justification for conceiving Cartographic Perspectives as an open educational resource, and for freeing it from its current exclusive distribution to NACIS members, subscribers and their patrons.