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Teaching Effectiveness Improvement Through Geobrain Technologies In Distance Education

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Conference

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Honolulu, Hawaii

Publication Date

June 24, 2007

Start Date

June 24, 2007

End Date

June 27, 2007

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Effective Learning Innovations in Civil Engineering Courses

Tagged Division

Civil Engineering

Page Count

11

Page Numbers

12.1353.1 - 12.1353.11

DOI

10.18260/1-2--1622

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/1622

Download Count

426

Paper Authors

author page

Guoqing Zhou Old Dominion University

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Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Improvement of GIS Distance Teaching Using GeoBrain Technologies

Abstract GIS course for undergraduate in Old Dominion University (ODU) is delivered via ODU TeleTechNet (TTN) system. The distant students cannot access the large volume of remotely sensed data like campus students when they conduct their homework and lab class. The GeoBrain system is capable of making remote students easily access the large volume of data in data pools through their internet-connected desktop computers without requiring the fast internet connection. With such a unique ready-to-explore geospatial data-rich environment, this paper introduce how we adopt the GeoBrain system as a tool for GIS distance courses to allow students to format, document, and access the geospatial data. The teaching improvements include: (1) add the topics related to GeoBrain technology into the course, and require students to finish the corresponding homework; (2) Add geospatial data standard adopted in GeoBrain system into the course; (3) Develop spatial analysis service modules for distance courses; (4) develop the homework for the courses. Finally, we evaluated the teaching effectiveness after teaching improvement using GeoBrain System by questionnaire survey, and the results demonstrated that the new teaching improvement is capable of adding students’ GIS knowledge.

1. INTRODUCTION The GIS courses for graduate and undergraduate students are offered in Old Dominion University (ODU) via distance education mode. The distance courses are delivered to 15 states, 50 higher education centers, and 4 oversee navy bases (Japan, Koera, Mid-East, and Canada) via both the regular classroom and ODU’s TTN (Tele-Tech-Net) system (active satellites, stream video, video tapes, DVD, etc.). One of the problems in the distance courses is that the remote students have difficulty to access the large volume of geospatial data for their homework and distance laboratory via internet. The GeoBrain system, which is funded by NASA with $5 millions and is in progress, is a prototype geospatial knowledge building system (Di et al., 2005a; 2005b). This system is designated to be capable of mobilizing NASA EOS (earth observation system) data and information through web service and knowledge management technologies for higher-education teaching and research. This system automates a range of geo-computational services at a limited number of geospatial domains and greatly facilitates the construction of complex geo- computation services and modeling, and makes petabytes of NASA EOS data and information, especially those in the ECS data pools, as easily accessible as their local resources, to higher- education users, professors, and students. This system especially allows users to dynamically and collaboratively develop interoperable, web-executable geospatial service modules and models, and run them on-line against any part of the petabytes of archived data to get back customized information products rather than raw data. The architecture of the geoBrain system is depicted in Fig. 1, and the more detailed descriptions can be referenced to Di et al. (2004a, 2004b, 2004c, 2004d, 2003). This paper presents our efforts in use of the GeoBrain system resource to improve our distance GIS teaching because the GeoBrain system is capable of making remote students easily access the large volume of geospatial data through their Internet-connected desktop computers without requiring the fast Internet connection.

Zhou, G. (2007, June), Teaching Effectiveness Improvement Through Geobrain Technologies In Distance Education Paper presented at 2007 Annual Conference & Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. 10.18260/1-2--1622

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