Like many (all?) people in this area my professional aim is to deliver to a range of students a comprehensive exposure to critical aspects of GIS (y,s or t) within a tight resource allocation. I am also committed to enhancing student lives through reforms which allow students greater flexibility over access to learning resources. Mainstream universities internationally are going to face major challenges to restructure their activities, and an initiative in GIScience offers unique opportunities to develop responses to some of these activities.
My professional track record shows a consistent and central commitment to these issues, and it is a natural response to be attracted by the proposed meeting. It is not easy to see what is the best form for advancing initiatives for change , but the kind of meeting proposed here offers both a realistic opportunity to address some of the key issues of defining and implementing an interoperable environment, as well as a springboard to take the ideas forward.
My goals from such a meeting are to further the concept of interoperability and to assess the realistic options for involvement of the University of Auckland and Australasia/Oceania in international developments in this area. In this respect the meeting appears set to advance debate on operation and ownership issues in interoperability, and offers to extend the scope of existing programmes. My hope would be to see some substantive initiatives emerge from the meeting, and to have an opportunity to co-operatively promote these in this part of the world.
I work on the assumption that interoperable education, in GISc or elsewhere, will be a significant strategy and one worth working to advance. It will be significant to Universities seeking to preserve autonomy but to provide cost-effective excellence in their learning resources, breadth of study and community accountability. It may well be an important tool against extreme corporatist forms of commodification and globalisation in education. In practice its promise of mixing external and local course ingredients offers an opportunity to preserve an education based on substantive, local direct human and institutional links.
In the area of GISc there are also, at least currently, substantial localised components of practice and legislation which need to be combined with generic components for successful local delivery. Such a demand mix favours a modular interoperable structure.
I also work on the assumption that for many national and curricular contexts the current scheduling constraints of tertiary education are not beneficial to student lifestyles. The advent of student loans and the fragmentation of student job opportunities is a critical factor in this, certainly in New Zealand and Australia. Interoperable arrangements would need to favour flexible delivery, and thus offer ways of enhancing lifestyle choices.
My general educational agenda is thus both conservative and radical. I am keen to utilise collaborative developments to enhance local learning opportunities. I am also keen to deconstruct the rigidity of present delivery systems and to spread learning opportunities, but to retain and enhance the human focus of learning. Interoperability seems a natural vehicle for testing solutions and meeting these various goals, and GISc a natural domain to work in initially.
For interoperative GISc education the barriers are considerable in four areas :
Consistent quality and sustainable achievement depend on the second set of problems being solved. The kind of activity involved fits no existing model completely : it isn't publishing, nor is it narrow institutional delivery. It involves a large virtual team with members functioning within a number of independent organisations with which specific working arrangements will need to be negotiated. There is a need for a relatively robust structure capable of functioning for up to a decade. Such a structure is at present relatively unproven and needs debate. It is this area that I perceive to be the most difficult barrier. Clarity in this area may be a prerequisite for any hope of substantial development occurring.
Optimal learning delivery structures are focal to generic student issues, and define the goal of the exercise. The issues here relate closely to section 1, but also include questions of what learning components get delivered and how (see Abstract below).
Flexible accreditation structures are vital if the enterprise is to be internationally successful. I suspect that there are very differentiated attitudes in this area.
I am keen to contribute a New Zealand perspective to any of these issues, but the Abstract below focuses on questions of delivery structures, in the broadest sense. This reflects a view that interoperability in GISc needs to be seen in the context of wider pressures on University education.
Abstract of Intent
The scope of what can be accomplished by interoperability in education continues to expand enormously due to a range of new technologies that allow effective communication and resourceing at a distance. These are now well established as tools for virtual teams working on research projects and collaborative developments. It is rapidly becoming possible to implement delivery of aspects of learning on a large scale using the same tools. For technological and many other reasons there is in parallel a growing pressure to re-think how mainstream learning might be best organised and delivered. This trend intersects with the problems faced in rapidly evolving academic domains which need to maintain currency and share expertise. GI Science is clearly one of these.
Interoperability is largely about sharing resources and experience so as to augment traditional delivery. In general it involves a mix of internalised resources and external resources. Such a mix has always existed in the form of guest lecturers or course texts, but the opportunity exists to evolve more responsive and more integrated functions through so called virtual technologies. These technologies can function locally and internationally. It is argued here that their effective deployment now depends more on human issues ( educational design and institutional organisation) than on technological implementation.
This contribution would focus on how different components of interoperability
might be managed within a mainstream educational environment, as well as
for return and distance learners. It will consider the interaction between
GISc curricula, components of interoperability, virtual delivery options
and student needs. It will seek to identify a range of GISc learning contexts
(by stage of student or student goals) and discuss the requirements of
interoperability (from course and student perspectives) and the constraints
placed on it for those specific contexts. Significant attention will be
placed on questions of areas of local content versus global validity, as
well as virtual support versus local congregation for learning. The fundamental
question will be what sort(s) of learning a framework for interoperable
GISc should be seeking to support.
Present position: Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Studies, University of Auckland
Present employer:University of Auckland
Academic qualifications: M.A. (Oxon) 1973, PhD. (Bristol) 1975
Years as a practising researcher: 26
Honours/distinctions/membership of societies, institutions, committees:
Editor, New Zealand Geographer 1981-89, Transactions of GIS 1995-.
Editorial Board International Journal of Geographic Information Systems
1987-92, British Journal of Educational Technology 1989, Journal of Geography
in Higher Education 1989-. President, New Zealand Computers in Education
Society 1984-88
Professional positions held: (years, position, institution, activity)
Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh 1973-4. Lecturer and Senior
Lecturer, University of Canterbury, 1974-95. Visiting Research Fellow,
University of Bristol 1980-81. Professor of Geography, University of Auckland
1995-
Present research/professional speciality:
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and their application to spatial
modelling, visualisation and education. Applications of GIS in tourism,
tourist flow modelling and economic geography.
Number of refereed publications: 45
Number of patents: 0
Number of significant publications not included in the above: 12
Select Publications (max 5)
------ (1993) The Python and the Pig : Integrating GIS into Mainstream Teaching. AGI Yearbook
---- 1997 : Flexible delivery and social learning: Seeking a new geography of education for GIS and GIS in education..Transactions in GIS, 2,2,169-179
------ and UNWIN D. 1997 : The Future for GIS Education. In Longley P., Goodchild M., Maguire D. and Rhind D. Geographic Information Systems. Geoinformation International, 1998 in press
----, Goldstone M. and Tan F. 1997 Implementing Flexible Learning in GIS Education : Experiments at the University of Auckland Spatial Analysis Facility. In Tan F. et al (editors) Information Technology and Learning : Examples for Select Asia-Pacific Countries. Ideas Press, Ma.
------1998 1996 : Cyberia and the Premature Death of Distance : the
new tertiary order and new geographies of education.. In Peters M (ed)
: Virtual Technologies in Education. Roundell , Wellington, in press