GIS Distance Learning at the NTU of Athens

GIS DISTANCE LEARNING AT THE NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS, GREECE

K.C. Koutsopoulos1 and N. Androulakakis2

1 Professor , NTU of Athens, Greece

2 Ph.D. candidate, NTU of Athens, Greece

Abstract

There is an increasing need to learn about GIS by professionals and students who cannot participate in the formal-traditional university education, because either they do not live close to universities or they are not eligible to follow university courses, or they cannot attend, for various reasons, the courses offered by the higher education system. As a result, alternative distance learning approaches need to be provided. Such an approach, however, has to deal with three sets of problems and challenges related to (a) education in general (how distance learning, while solving many of the problems faced by traditional methods, can be a viable, specialised and highly technological educational substitute), (b)the Internet (how by making full use of its advantages can the dual educational goals of disseminating knowledge and teaching be accomplished), and (c) GIS (how to overcome technical issues associated with managing, communicating and administering cartographic data).The distance learning course, offered by the Geography and Spatial Analysis Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) has provided an asynchronous approach to deal with some of these challenges, by utilising two software programs: Moodle to support the educational process, and ESRI’s ArcGIS as the Geographical Information System. The course has so far provided to more than 200 people from different parts of Greece, as well as Greeks in many European countries (United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain, Cyprus, etc.), a chance to reach a high theoretical and practical level in utilising GIS and, thus, progress in their professional careers.

Introduction

In the past few years GIS applications have increased tremendously and have entered to almost all aspects of our daily activities. This unprecedented development is due to the creation of a lot of geographical data, both in vector and raster formats, the expansion of the World Wide Web and the development of Internet mapping, bringing into our home and at close graspthe geographical information we may be seeking. This GIS development, however, has created a growing demand for GIS courses by professionals or employees in the private and public sectors, who work in fields where GIS are applied and thus they need to master their use. But most of these potential students,for many and varied reasons, can not attend the traditional university curriculum. Some of the reasons are: lack of time, family and work problems and long distances between home and suitable educational centres. Further, some of them fear that they will not succeed, because of the long time interval that has elapsed since their graduation from university, or that the academic community may not be effectively organised to educate them as professionals rather than as students. As a result, alternative learning approaches need to be provided. Indeed, the literature has shown that “distance learning courses are the most appropriate means to meet such demands” (Androulakakis& Koutsopoulos, 2002).

Distance learning education, especially in GIS, however, has to deal with the following educational, technological and technical problems and challenges related to:

Education: Distance learning has to overcome not only the well known problems related to the traditional education methods and the fact that the characteristics of adult learners are completely different from those of non-adults (Keegan, 1988, 1996), but mainly to provide a viable substitute within a highly technological and specialized environment. The educational issue, therefore, is how distance learning, while solving many of the problems related to traditional methods and the nature of adult education, can be a successful alternative to the person-to-person teaching.

Internet: Given that the exploitation of the technological advantages of the internet for education purposes is behind those in other areas and especially in terms of solving the issues related to transforming the real teaching environment into a virtual one.The technological issue of distance learning, therefore, is how by making full use of the internet’s advantages, the dual educational goal of disseminating knowledge and teaching can be accomplished, so that the educational process and the transfer of knowledge from the teacher to the student from a distance can be accomplished in an undisturbed and functional manner.

GIS:It is well known that managing, communicating and administering cartographic data present special problems that can not be overcome in a straight forward or traditional manner. Moreover, in teaching GIS, which deal with geographic (including cartographic) data, it is necessary to resolve problems related to interoperability that are still present among these systems. As a result, the technical issue of distance learning is how to overcome problems with managing, communicating and administering from distance spatial data.

Based on these issues, in the development of the distance learning course at the NTU of Athens, the following principles were taken into consideration and are summarily presented next.

Basic Principles of Adult Education

The course methodology takes into consideration the basic principles of adult education, as they have been formulated by a large number of researchers, engaged in this form of education (Campbell and Burnaby, 2001; Rogers, 2002, 2003). Specifically, the course recognized thatadult studentswho attend a distance learning course have:

Concrete objectives.

More experience than the traditional students.

Well developed approach in their way of learning.

Willingness to actively participate in the educational process.

Special problems in learning.

As a result, the following techniques, appropriate in adult education, were incorporated in the course:

Self-directed learning,

Inaugural or kick-off meeting,

Educational contract,

Provision of reading materials(books, notes, etc)

Creation of an environment conductive to questioning, discussing, etc.

Forums for exchange of ideas, concerns and problems.

Opportunities for practice (exercises - demonstrations using multimedia files, etc),

Case study (solving a real problem),

Educational visits, and

Evaluation procedures

Basic Principles of Distance Learning Education

In the literature there are many definitions as to what constitutes a distance-learning education. A definition that is widely accepted has been given by Keegan (1988, 1996), who considersdistance learning as a form of education having the following characteristics which were taken into consideration:

Direct contact between teacher and student does not exist (except perhaps of a few non-obligatory meetings).

Lack of student comradeship (apart from a few exceptions of social character).

Provision of supporting services by the educational institution, which designed the educational material and is carrying out the educational programme.

Existence of bi-directional communicationcapabilities, providing a direct dialogue between teachers and students.

Use of modern teaching materials, such as electronic documents and multimedia files that are transferred through the internet from the teacher to the student.

In addition, in distance learning there are many obstaclesrelated to studentsthat need to be overcome, such as:

Development of interest and motives for learning.

Comprehension of the structure of the training from a distance.

Appreciation of an analytical and guided way of thinking.

Familiarisation with techniques to evaluate their learning progress.

Readiness to study, which is the biggest problem in distance learning and appears in two forms: unwillingness to begin the training process and early abandonment of the course.

The NTU of Athens seminar, in order to overcome these difficulties, has applied the basic principle: a student’s success dependson the teacher. That is,the teacher is the one that can urge students on a daily basis and also motivatethem to acquire on the one hand confidence in their abilities, and on the other to sensitise them to apply the acquired knowledge in their daily life.

Interoperability in GIS Software

The lack of interoperability in GIS commercial software, during the last two decades, has caused a considerable number of problems in GIS training(Heywood et al., 1998, 1999). These problems are briefly described below.

Diversity of operational concepts:Although most of the Geographical Information Systems are based on relational or object-oriented databases, it has not yet become feasible to agree on a common language, as is for example SQL,in their databases. As a result, existing GIS software packages have differences in: the spatial models they support, the terminology they use,the internal forms of spatial data storage and the development of applications. In practical terms this means that both teachers and studentsof GIS operate within an unstable and changing environment.

Specificity of software:As result of the lack of common features among commercial software packages, it is a lot easier for most teachers to adapt particular commercial software, as well as the terminology and models of avendor, simplifying, therefore, the educational process and changing it to one of learning the software. From an educational point of view, however, this is very dangerous, because the training is confined within the frameworkof a particular software used without acquiring the basic knowledge on the fundamental principles of GIS.Of courseif the chosen software has a widespread use, then an advantage exists for the students, since they can increase their chances to find employment and to improve their performance at work. On the other hand, the dependency of students on particular commercial software does not give them the ability, when confronted with different GIS software, to apply what they have learned.

Fallacy ofGIS’nature: Because of the shortcoming mentioned previously, the prevailing opinion is that GIS is a specialised computer application that concerns a few under- or post-graduate students,as opposed to the fact that GIS shouldbe considered as a toolwith which all students interested in management and analysis of spatial data, as well as spatial planning, should use.

In planning the educational materials for the Distance Learning course in GIS of the Geography and Spatial Analysis Laboratory at NTU of Athens, these problems were taken into consideration and as a result emphasis was put into strengthening the understanding of theory, underlying the operation of the GIS.That is, apart from the two text books,additional, simple and comprehensible notes were provided addressed to adult students. Moreover, in order to help students in understanding the theory, a series of exercises were provided, using ESRI’s ArcGIS, which is the most widespread GIS softwareinternationallyand in Greece.

Management System of Educational Activities

The software used for the management of the educational activities is the Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment), which is a modular object-oriented dynamic environment of electronic learning. The technology of development of MOODLE is PHP, and supports the more widely used databases (SQL server, ORACLE, MySQL, Postgre, etc.). The database in the proposed system is MySQL. It has been developed on the basic philosophy of constructive learning through social interaction, and focuses on learning via the social interaction of participants in combination with access to specifically designed and structured educational material of electronic learning. The role of the instructor is not only to provide a wide range of knowledge and skills to the students, but also to coach them, as part of an educational experience, through interaction using as a basis their individual needs and expectations. The co-ordination by the instructor of educational activities and discussions is directed to lead the students to achieve their GIS training objectives. Based on the principles of adult education and the basic principles of distance learning, the following operations of the educational programme were utilised.

Lectures and References to Other Sources (Sources, Links): The system provides each teacher with the ability to place on the Web page of the course notes in electronic form. Although most text forms are supported,the lecture notes of the NTUA course are in PDF and DOC forms. In addition, the teacher has the option, depending on education requirements, to provide the students with links to other sites or multimedia application files (video, flash animator), which explain in a simple and comprehensible manner aspects of the subject matter that is taught.

Exercises: The teacher can require from the students exercises in order to help them understand the necessary theoretical and practical concepts. The student, after completing the homework exercise, sends it in a compressed form to the teacher, who makes the necessary corrections, and marks it accordingly. The student has the option to view the teacher’s comments and he/she is free to decide:either torepeat the homework exercise or to accept the teacher’s evaluation.

Evaluation Quiz: At the end of each weekly lesson, there is an evaluation test in the form of a quiz. The results are posted, giving the students a chance to reviewtheir mistakes, and the teacher to figure outareas that were not well understood and, therefore, to provide the students with additional notes or to post new supportive material, such as video, etc., explaining in a more effective manner the problems which were encountered.

Forums:Forums encourage the asynchronous communication among students, since each participant can post his/her comments or questions, and any other, fellow student or instructor, can answer. The instructors do not normally enter this discussion at the beginning, but give the students the opportunity to discuss the problem among themselves.

Chats: The live weekly chats give the opportunity of a virtual meeting of teacher and students on a prearranged day and hour for solving queries on theory, exercises and quizzes.

Electronic Mail - Personal Messages: Similar to normal postal correspondence, electronic mail is used for the exchange of messages or other information between teachers and students, but also among students themselves. Alternatively, the exchange of personal messagescan be used through channels provided by the system.

Statistics: The system provides for a continuous statistical appraisal of each team of students, as well as to view their usage of the system individually. Thus, the teacher can locate students that are in danger of abandoning the course and try to help or encourage them. Therefore, the biggest problem of distance learning, which is the high proportion of drop out students, can be reduced considerably.

GIS Software ESRI’s ArcGIS

The ESRI’s ArcGIS software was selected as the GIS program, since it is one of the most widespread GIS programsinternationally and in Greece. That is, each student is given the additional benefit to be familiarized with commercial software that has a high probability toencounter it either at work or at the university during their post-graduate studies. The students, upon registration, are given a full version of that software for a six month period. This is a long enough period for the participants to familiarise themselves and to perform all the weekly exercises and quizzes, as well as to carry out the case study that they have to submit at the end of the seminar.

Description of the Educational Programme

The educational programme is comprisedof 20 lessons that are structured on a weekly basis and three face-to-face advisory meetings. Strong emphasis is given to the inaugural meeting. This meeting plays an important role in the process of distance learning for adults. The development of a climate of confidence between teacher and student is considered an essential condition for a creative process of learning. It effectively helps to overcome the obstacles and the defence mechanisms that are related to their personality and experiences, as well as to their social obligations.

The inaugural meeting consists of an “exchange” between the instructors and the students for a series of procedural information. However, this traditional technique can be improved, if greater freedom of expression is given to the students. That is, if more use is made of active educational techniques, such as interviews, use of their experiences, search for ways to collaborate or some combination, aiming at actively involving the students in their own training process. Moreover, the combination of educational techniques used each time, should have an explicit educational aim which needs to be harmonised with the subject and training programme objectives, the available time, and students’ acceptance.Thus, at the end of the inaugural meeting, the final programme agreed upon constitutes the educational contract that both instructors and students are committed to adhere.

The two other meetings are used for solving the students’ problems, answering their questions and presenting their progress in preparation for the examinations. The final examination, as well as the submission of the case study, are taking place at the NTUA Geography and Spatial Analysis Laboratory. During the whole period students are encouraged to participate in meetings, such as national or international conferences on GIS or in social gatherings.