What are the GIS education problems which interoperability may address?

draft by Karen Kemp, June 2, 1998

Setting the context

At the beginning of the meeting, the participants introduced themselves and revealed their personal reasons for attending this meeting. It is interesting to see the range of higher level strategic education questions that continue to haunt educators. Some of these issues are:

Is there a logical process which can be used to facilitate the development of good education materials?
How do we create good spatial analysts?
How can we improve pedagogy?
How can we improve the level of research conducted about education?
How can we facilitate collaboration in education?

During the early discussions, it soon became apparent that there were some important and somewhat contradictory perspectives on the topic of the meeting about which we needed to be clear:

Is the metaphor we are using for interoperable education here that of a publication made of interchangeable parts or a total structural change in education, or both? The conclusion of the group was that both need to be considered and integrated during our deliberations.
Are we talking about full distance learning programs, materials for distance learning, or materials for on-campus instructor-led learning? As the participants came from different contexts with respect to distance learning and on-campus instructor-led learning, it was necessary to keep this distinction in mind throughout our discussions. However, the focus of the meeting was on how to make on-line education materials interoperable and shareable, no matter what education context they were to be used in.

In the first breakout session, participants discussed the problems they felt motivate the need for interoperability in GIS education. Both problems of a general nature and problems specific to GIS education were recorded.

What is special about GIS education?

The technological basis

Since GIScience is based on a continually evolving technology, technical foundations and even some concepts change rapidly making it difficult to justify investing too many resources in the development of shareable education materials. How can we separate education about the technology from education about the concepts so that elements which do not change do not need to be constantly revised? Can we achieve this by breaking education materials into several smaller components? How small do thse components need to be (i.e. what level of granularity is needed)? Additionally, since technology is central, open concepts are relevant for both our education materials and our technology and data. Is there some overlap between open education systems and open GIS technology which we can take advantage of?

Problems of localization and generalization

In the GIS education context, both concepts and data need to be localized in order to address:

Differences imposed by local and federal institutions and regulations.
Differing national data models, formats and standards, including semantic variations in classification systems.
Cultural differences between both different geographic regions and different disciplines.
Language variations both within and between language groups (i.e. South American Spanish versus European Spanish).

This leads to questions about what can and should be localized and what not. As well, many concepts and general topics such as geocoding and street networks are not easily generalized across various geographic regions. Is there some way to separate the general from the specific when preparing education materials for general use? Can this be achieved by separating concepts from context? Can we identify a level of granularity which achieves this?

The multidisciplinary nature

The way in which GIS is used differs considerably across disciplines. Thus, what needs to be learned also varies. As well, although GIS is assumed to have almost universal application, there is a general lack of spatial literacy. Is it possible to determine the fundamental core needed and to teach it broadly and generically across all disciplines?

The international character

Given that there are only a handful of major GISystems used worldwide and that international standards for open systems and data exchange are currently being developed, the potential for materials developed by any instructor to be useful to colleagues around the world is quite high. As a result the sharing of education materials is already a well established state of affairs in the GIS education community. This has placed the community at a critical stage at which it has become essential to identify and address education interoperability problems and issues.

General problems for interoperable education

Technical issues

The group acknowledged the urgent need for collaborative efforts and mechanisms intended to assist in the discovery of diverse but relevant educational materials already available on the WWW. However, later presentations by several participants demonstrated that many of the important technical problems are currently being addressed (see the following section "Some Solutions").

Institutional issues

While we would like to be able to share materials internationally, different incentive models for contribution create barriers to the type of international collaborative projects needed to make interoperable education work. At a minimum, the need for intellectual property protection and for financial return on investment of time vary considerably between the US and Europe. These models need to be clearly specified so that these differences can be accounted for when planning and conducting collaborative projects. In addition, as education materials are developed by various kinds of institutions, both private and public, mechanisms for promoting collaboration while providing for financial transactions between them are needed.

A further institutional issue relates to shifting education paradigms. A large repository of on-line interoperable education materials provides an opportunity to move from "just-in-case" to "just-in-time" to "just-for-you" education, but not all educational institutions are prepared for these kinds of delivery mechanisms.

Finally, questions of granularity are not only technological, but they also need to be discussed at the institutional level. What is the appropriate level of interoperability from the institutional perspective? Should it be at the course level, the unit level, the exercise level or the component level? Are different interoperable mechanisms needed for each level?

International issues

Since GIS is international in character, it follows that any interoperable education activities need to account for international differences in education in general. These range from the obvious problem of language differences to more subtle issues of different education styles. Attention will need to be given to appropriate structures and components of educational materials so that they will suit eudcational needs worldwide. Can materials prepared in English simply be translated to other languages? Are there vocabularies and/or dictionaries for GIS technical terms in all languages? Are there differences in how educational experiences should be structured in other regions? How might these differences be accounted for in the definition of education components?

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