I have participated in a number of geographical projects in the area of curriculum development. In June 1995, I co-authored a lesson on global warming for the Association of American Geographers’ “Hands-On!” project. The following year, I participated in the first Virtual Geography Department session in an effort to promote the use of the Internet in geographical instruction. Currently, I am collaborating with several geography faculty at the University of Colorado on the GeographyWeb project. To date, this project has developed four Web-related lessons and several course homepages. These materials can be accessed on-line at http://www.colorado.edu/geography/COGA/geogweb.
I firmly believe that sound educational principles must inform the development, implementation, and use of instructional materials. In order to ensure that future educational resources in GIScience are of the highest quality, geographers must make theoretically informed decisions on matters of curriculum. Theories of learning can help GIScience geographers translate the fundamentals of GIScience into teachable concepts and experiences. Moreover, educational research can aid the development of effective teaching methods, course content, learning objectives, and student assessment in GIScience.
My dissertation research will examine the diffusion of instruction with the Internet in U.S. college geography. This project, which is scheduled to begin in June 1998, is meaningful in both a theoretical and practical sense. First, this study will investigate how factors affecting the adoption of Internet-based teaching vary under different institutional contexts. In general, research on diffusion of innovations is concerned with identifying the main determinants of adoption in a particular circumstance. Potential critical factors include individual and organizational adoption characteristics, the impacts of agents of change, and the social context in which adoption decisions are made. Unfortunately, these factors have not received much attention from geographers, and as a result, researchers have a poor understanding of the role of place and perception in relation to the adoption of pedagogical innovations.
Second, this research addresses organizational issues associated with efforts to promote teaching with technology in higher education. The Internet will enable the GI community to communicate and distribute future instructional materials and research findings in an open, on-line environment. Additionally, teaching GIScience with the Internet can efficiently integrate future educational resources developed as a result of the workshop. In geography, studies of instructional technology have tended to focus on evaluating student learning outcomes and instructional materials. In contrast, data from this research could be used to develop coordinative strategies that acknowledge the specific needs and perspectives of GIScience educators working in different institutional settings. In sum, the results of this research will bear directly on prospects for developing an interoperable environment for teaching GIScience in higher education.
Given my background and plans for research in geography, I believe that I can help foster professional collaborations that result in an open environment for the exchange of high-quality educational resources in GIScience. In the position statement that follows, I propose two approaches to research on the topic of "Interoperability and GIScience Education." Thank you for considering me in this important and timely workshop.
Overall, the literature in GIS education is preoccupied with course content. Sui (1995) argued that a new pedagogical framework is needed to improve the quality of GIS education. Problems associated with the implementation of past instructional materials in GIS (Goodchild and Kemp 1992) should alert the GI community of the need for substantive research in GIScience education. Specifically, research is needed in the following areas of curriculum: teaching methods, materials development, and assessment.
Research on the teaching and learning of GIScience is necessary to further an understanding of the relationships between theories of knowledge and teaching practice. This understanding will help geographers create high-quality instructional materials in GIScience. Importantly, the GI community must work with educational researchers in geography to ensure that valid educational principles guide the creation and use of future instructional materials. This effort will require careful study of the literature on teaching and learning with technology. Specifically, future research should address differences in teaching, learning, and assessment in relation to behaviorism and constructivism.
Behaviorism is linked to an objectivist view of reality in which knowledge and skills are assumed to have existence and meaning independent of context and culture (Atkins 1992). Behaviorist approaches to education place an emphasis on the acquisition of subject-matter through rote memorization and repetition of tasks. Furthermore, it is assumed that learning can be assessed in terms of how student performance (e.g., exam answers) compares to pre-defined criteria for correctness. Pedagogically, the lecture is seen to be the most efficient format for transmitting a body of knowledge to students. Moreover, behaviorist instructional materials tend to have certain identifiable characteristics, including (Atkins 1992: p. 254):
• material broken down into small, logically discrete instructional steps
• material often presented in the form of a rule, category, principle, formula, or definition followed by examples and implications of the rule etcetera applied
• learning activities sequenced for increasing difficulty or complexity
• opportunity provided to observe, review, and copy the desired behavior
• the sequence and pacing through the material is usually outwith the control of the learner
• frequent review/revision with check tests at strategic points
Behaviorism continues to dominate teaching and learning in higher education due to the lecture model's high visibility and familiarity (Katz 1993). Its primary strengths lie in a structured, deductive approach for efficient transfer of facts, skills, and basic concepts. Whether or not students actually retain information and skills delivered via behaviorist techniques is open to question (Oblinger and Maruyama 1996). Moreover, behaviorism has been widely criticized by educators for maintaining false cleavages between subject matter and learners. These critics prefer alternative teaching and learning strategies that, in theory, are more sensitive to cognitive processes (Scheurman 1998). These alternative approaches may be classified under the heading of constructivism.
Constructivism is premised on the assumption that knowledge is contextual; in other words, meanings subjectively exist and vary across individuals, time, and cultural groups (Guba and Lincoln 1994). Constructivists value the dialectics of learning over the transmission of received knowledge (Fosnot 1996). These principles have roots in the progressive education movement, which was launched in the late 1890s with the opening of John Dewey's Laboratory School in Chicago. Dewey (1938, 1956) believed that effective learning in schools occurred only when students were able to "psychologize" the curriculum, i.e., to reconnect subject matter to the experience from which it was abstracted.
Constructivists design lessons in which students learn from their experience as they actively inquire into meaningful problems (Hill 1990; Slater 1993). Learning objectives may be expanded to include the formation of higher-order skills (e.g., critical thinking), values (Fien and Slater 1985), and attitudes (Klein 1995) towards a subject. Characteristics of constructivist instructional materials include (Atkins 1992: pp. 259-260):
• learner expected to analyse, synthesize, summarize, describe, and solve problems.
• interaction with 'expert'.
• learner invited to explore and discover an environment for themselves, sometimes with guidance.
• learner expected to build up own hypotheses, explanations, definitions, categories, rules, etcetera, through study of examples and reflection on own experiences.
• learner moved back and forth between symbolic representation of phenomena and the real-life referent.
In summary, research on the teaching and learning of GIScience will result in a better understanding of students’ curricular experiences with GIS and will support the creation of high-quality educational resources.
2. Achieving interoperability for GIScience education
The potential success of an interoperable environment for GIScience education can be enhanced with an understanding of the organizational issues involved in the development, implementation, and use of Internet-based instructional materials. My dissertation research will address three problems associated with Internet-based teaching in college-level geography. First, campus-based initiatives to promote teaching with technology are often haphazardly planned and implemented (Katz 1993; Meyer and Berger 1996). Indeed, such efforts often fail to involve faculty in the planning process and will, as a result, meet with slow acceptance or rejection (Surry and Gustafson 1994). This situation threatens to undermine the success of geographical projects (e.g., the Virtual Geography Department) that are producing Internet-based instructional materials (Foote 1997). Burkman (1987) argued that more faculty would be willing to adopt instructional innovations if their perceptions were understood and considered by planners. Unfortunately, the relationship between adopter perceptions and innovation diffusion has received little attention from researchers (Morrill et al. 1988; Rogers 1995). Therefore, this research will measure geographers' perceptions of the Internet and explain how their perceptions affect its utilization.
The second problem requiring attention concerns the role of place in the diffusion of Internet-based teaching in geography. In higher education, faculty must consider many technological, economic, and personal issues before they decide to adopt or reject an instructional innovation (Heterick 1993; Surry and Gustafson 1994). The degree to which these issues form constraints to diffusion will be a function of general differences between research universities, comprehensive colleges, and liberal arts colleges. But, it is unclear what specific factors facilitate or impede teaching with the Internet across U.S. college geography. Therefore, this research will determine how factors affecting adoption decisions vary under different institutional contexts.
Finally, geographers, in general, do not understand the curricular implications of the Internet. Faculty can now create, use, and distribute instructional materials that transcend the spatial and temporal confines of physical classrooms (Dyrli and Kinnaman 1995; Howard-Vital 1995; Oblinger and Maruyama 1996). In practice, this can take a variety of forms, from on-line lecture notes to full-fledged distance education courses on the Web. In the past, technological innovations (e.g., GIS) have had dramatic effects on how geography is taught (Nellis 1994). Nevertheless, it remains unknown how the Internet will change educational practice in geography because no comprehensive data on its instructional uses exist. Seeking to aid that understanding, this research will assess how geographers are using the Internet for geographical instruction.
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I. Education
Doctoral student in Geography, University of Colorado - Boulder (current).
MS in Geography, Pennsylvania State University (August 1995).
BS in Earth Sciences (Geography minor), Pennsylvania State University
(May 1993).
II. Teaching experience
Instructor of geography, Shippensburg University, PA (August 1995 -
May 1996).
III. Research activities
1. Paper presentation, “The societal implications of GIS education.”
Annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Boston, MA.
March 1998.
2. Paper presentation, “Doctoral dissertation research proposal: The Diffusion of Instruction with the Internet in U.S. College Geography.” Annual meeting of the National Council for Geographic Education, Orlando, FL. October 1997.
3. Paper presentation, “Modules as Models: Educational Analogues for Internet- based Instructional Materials." Annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Ft. Worth, TX. April 1997.
4. Paper presentation, “The Geography of Greenhouse Gas Emissions - An Active Learning Module.” Regional meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Greeley, CO. September 1996.
IV. Education activities
1. Geography Web Project, Center for Geography Education, University
of Colorado - Boulder (current).
2. Virtual Geography Department, University of Texas, Austin, TX. Session three. June 1998.
3. Virtual Geography Department, University of Texas, Austin, TX. Session one. June 1996.
4. “Hands-On!” workshop, Clark University, MA. June 1995.
V. Publications
1. Solem, M.N. 1998. “The societal implications of GIS education.”International
Journal for Geographic Information Science, under review.
2. Hill, A.D. and Solem, M.N. 1998. “Geography on the Web: Changing the Learning Paradigm?” Journal of Geography, under review.
3. Liverman, D.M., and Solem, M.N. 1997. The Geography of Greenhouse Gas Emissions - An Active Learning Module. Association of American Geographers: Washington, DC.