Abstract

Using GPS to Understand Student Movements During Surveying Exercises
Track: Teaching with GIS in Higher Education
Author(s): John Brockhaus, Allison Day, Michael Hendricks

Student productivity during surveying laboratory exercises conducted outdoors is highly variable. Over the past thirteen years efforts have been made to attempt to quantify and understand this variability. Most of this work has focused on relating student pre-lab preparation time and time spent becoming familiar with hardware and software with the amount of time used to complete a laboratory and the associated grade awarded. During the past academic year this effort was expanded to include the use of wrist mounted GPS devices to monitor the actual movements of student survey teams and the time expended to complete specific requirements. This work is currently on going. When completed the data acquired from the GPS units will be downloaded into ArcGIS for spatial analysis and also correlated with the amount of time students spent preparing for a laboratory assignment and familiarizing themselves with the hardware and software systems being used.

John Brockhaus
United States Military Academy
Dept. of Geography & Env. Eng.
745 Brewerton Road
West Point , New York 10996
United States
Phone: 8459382063
Fax: 8459383339
E-mail: john.brockhaus@usma.edu

Allison Day
United States Military Academy
Dept. of Geography & Env. Eng.
745 Brewerton Road
West Point , New York 10996
United States
Phone: 8459382063
E-mail: allison.day@usma.edu

Michael Hendricks
United States Military Academy
Dept. of Geography & Env. Eng.
745 Brewerton Road
West Point , New York 10996
United States
Phone: 8459382063
E-mail: michael.hendricks@usma.edu