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Institutions | Training | Online Education | Papers / Articles
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Web Based EO/GIS Education And Training Opportunities And Challenges With Referancerto Indian Scenario
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4. Issues In Web-Based Educaion
a) Short attention time span: -
Compared to classroom learners, online learners have relatively short attention time spans. This is because of difficulty in reading on the monitor compared to a textbook. To hold a learner's attention authors needs to present the information in a clear format. More importantly, the information should be packaged into learning units that are small enough to hold the learner's attention.
b) Non-uniformity in learning: -
People learn and process information in different ways and there are many different ways to classify learning styles. Conner classified learning styles by senses. People access information on the bases of their senses, but generally favour one of the following: visually (by sight), auditorally (by sound), kinesthetically (by moving) and tactiley (by touch)(Conner). A learner in a classroom environment has a strong support system including the instructor and fellow learners. The classroom learner has more support to fact challenges and difficulties during the learning process. Online learners, feel hopeless and frustrated when problems occur. The problems result from vague instructions, unexpected results and lack of immediate feedback.
To solve these problems, the navigation of the instructional design should be intuitive. That is, the learning components should be easy to access. Instructions should be clearly written and thoroughly tested. Each document should be small and downloaded quickly. For larger documents that are absolutely necessary to the course, estimated downloading time should provided. More importantly, personal online support should be implemented and easily accessible.
c) International Scenario: -
GIS instructors and trainers may find it helpful to integrate the Virtual Campus into their own classroom or distance learning programmes. Virtual Campus courses can be used as prerequisite or supplements to instructor-led or distance-learning courses. Many colleges and universities use Virtual Campus courses in their curricula. The University of California incorporates the Virtual Campus into its distance-learning graduate credit GIS conjunction with various colleges including the University of California Riverside and the university of Salizburg, Austria. Virtual Campus courses can be purchased online with a credit card or purchase in bulk at a discount. ESRI also offers Virtual Campus courses for one year at a fixed price. North Carofina State University offers graduate courses in GIS related to natural resource management and the college of Forest makes extensive use of the ESRI Virtual Campus is almost all of it's a GIS courses.
Tasks Related To Indian Situation
The issues tasks related to Indian situation with reference to web-based EO/GIS learning are as follows:
- Internet accessibility both in terms of the time for getting hooked, browsing and downloading need to be improved by an order of magnitude.
- In the web development, it is important to maintain a consistent, clear and user-friendly interface. So it is essential to aim at such a development.
- In implementing the program it should be flexible and include la variety of components like practical work, scope for assessment and interaction apart from regular course work.
- Though the EO/GIS education is already available on the web it is essential that the learners in India must have Indian case studies, local examples supported by practical work pertaining to Indian environment.
References:
- Correr, M. L. Learning: The critical Technology, White paper, wave Technologies International, Inc. http://www.wavetech.com/aboutwave/whtpaper/abttmwp.html
- Norlan, M.E (1999) ONLINE LEARNING: The business of Learning' 99 Conference, Session#805, Los Angeles, California.
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