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Education/Research
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The impact of technological change on educational programs: How will we cope?
Norm Edwards,Greg Ellis
Department of Land Information
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
As technological change impacts upon many aspects of our lives, land information and related areas are being affected drastically in many ways.
Remote sensing , until recently an emerging technology, is maturing and being utilized in a diverse range of applications. Nowadays, for example, the integration of remote sensing with other technologies, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), is significant in many mapping related applications.
Changes are also occurring in other aspects of the land information industry. Issues such as the blurring of professional boundaries and the increasing need to diversify both skills and levels of knowledge add to the total impact. For academic institutions, these diverse changes affect directly the philosophy, the content and the methodology of the educational programs that are offered.
This paper will investigate and discuss some of these changes and the type and nature of their effects. It will outline how courses at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) are being modified in an attempt to maintain them as relevant, effective and desirable programs for the land information profession and for the community as a whole.
Introduction
The impact of the rapidly changing and developing face of technology on the educational process is quite dramatic. It would seem that almost every day new challenges and changes occur, and for the educator trying to provide relevant and appropriate courses this is a nightmare.
One of the challenges today is to provide some sort of relevant structure and philosophical basis to something that is moving quickly away from he traditional . Change is all around us. But for traditionally conservative professions which are used to convention and stability, the effects of the types of change which we are undergoing are quite traumatic. To cope with the change and to develop educational programs which are acceptable and appropriate is the challenge of the 1990’s for all educators.
To educators in the disciplines of surveying and mapping, the readily identifiable problem is to decide upon the appropriate mechanisms, structure and content for educational programs to produce graduates who are competent, relevant and able to absorb and develop as changes continue to occur in the future.
Presented at the 12th Asian Conference on Remote Sensing, Singapore, 30 October – 5 November 1991.
The considerations
In addressing this problem are a number of factors which require consideration.
- The surveying and mapping professions have been conservative and traditional by nature, and as a consequence are generally uncomfortable with change. Significant and/or radical changes may even elicit and response which chooses to ignore the problem in its entirety.
- In Australia there is an increasing advocacy of the interest in multidisciplinary and generalist approaches to project development in areas relevant to the land-related disciplines. There has certainly been a shift away from the traditional and discipline – oriented approaches to surveying and mapping.
- This has resulted in non-categorical job descriptions. For example, in the past a surveying position would be advertised in such a way that only qualified surveyors would be eligible to apply, and the employer (usually also a surveyor ) would chose appropriately from a group of applicants qualified as surveyors. Nowadays it is increasingly the case that jobs are described in more generalist terms and such the certain skills and knowledge are required. No longer are such jobs for surveyors only. The consequence of this is that graduates from surveying and mapping courses must compete, in the market place, with a range of other graduates.
- This new and emerging areas which are relevant to land-related activities are not being identified with particular professional groups. Many groups have interest in and involvement with Geographic Information System (GIS), remote sensing and the Global Positioning System (GPS), for example. There is ample indication, however, that surveyors and cartographers are well – placed to take on the burden required to be shouldered by Land Information professionals within society {Edwards and Cartwright, 1989}.
- Changing technology and resulting work practices have also impacted upon the surveying and mapping professions. If courses are to remain relevant, then new areas of study need to be incorporated. However, it is not possible to keep adding material endlessly; at some stage course need to be looked at with the view to removing material which has become obsolete or irrelevant.
- For many surveyors, the term surveying is synonymous with cadastral surveying. This implies a legally protected niche which the surveyor will attempt to retain as a financially rewarding haven. The effect of this possibly false perception means that many in the profession do not see the urgency or need to become involved in the emerging areas of potential employment.
- The problem of defining the roles of the technician (or technologist ) and the professional is also becoming difficult, with technological advanced enabling many tasks which were once only able to be carried out by the professional to be undertaken by the sub-professional.
- Professional identity needs also to be addressed. If a course undertaken by students is altered in significant ways, when is the graduate no longer a surveyor or a cartographer? And when do the boundaries between these two prof.- essions blur sufficiently to be ignored? The difficulty here lies in adopting an acceptable definition for the surveyor or cartographer – a definition which may vary significantly within various groups across the profession
- Advances in technology quickly render hardware and software obsolete. Hardware and software typically have maintenance contracts which provide problem-solving facilities and upgrades. With financial resource limited it is not possible for academic institutions to purchase and subsequently replace or upgrade equipment from recurrent funding sources. If a Department has a
variety of hardware and software then the additive amount required to satisfy these contracts can be quite prohibitive.
- Changing the nature an content of courses does take time. Typically, a major course amendment may take over a year to pass through the approval system. Thus if the changes take one year to develop within the Department, one year to be approved, and if the course is four years in duration, then the first graduates passing through the restructured program will be six years downstream from the commencement of the notion of change, in accordance with the findings of Leahy and Williamson { 1991}
If the graduates take up to four years to be in positions to use their training in a significant ways, then lead time for change is even longer. The consequence of this is that courses would be expected always to be catching up, but in fact they would always be behind the change which is occurring.
- Change also severely impacts on the academics employed within educational institutions. The ability to accommodate and be comfortable with change is quite variable. A competent and hardworking academic in an areas seen to be no longer relevant may have great difficulty accepting the demise of his or her specialist field, and may not readily accept the need to move into a new area of interest. The ephemeral nature of modern times indicates that during a working lifetime there may occur the need to be retrained several times. Younger academics generally accept this notion, older people may not.
- As financial constraints are applied, academic institutions are forced to seek more funds from non-recurrent sources. Thus the spectrum of activities expected of academics is much wider than in past times. They are now expected to teach and administer course at undergraduate and postgraduate level, supervise higher degree students, run short course programs, carry out research and publish the results, undertake appropriate consultancies, and be active professionally. The need to be more entrepreneurial is certainly becoming important within academic institutions in Australia.
One Australian Approach
Having defined the problem and expanded upon some of the difficulties, restrictions and challenges, let us now consider what may be an appropriate course of action from an academic surveying and mapping department to adopt in order to survive, and indeed prosper, in the coming decade.
At the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), undergraduate courses in Surveying and/or Cartography have been offered for over thirty-five years. During the nineteen-seventies, programs leading to Associate ship Diploma qualifications were replaced by Degree courses in both disciplines, to be taken over three years of full-time study, or a part – time equivalent.
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