Kenneth L. Russell, Dean E. Ayres, Osborne Nye
Houston Community College is now offering its beginning GIS course "Introduction to GIS/GPS" via the Internet. The course has four components. First the students learn the ArcView software using a series of tutorials. They read a standard GIS textbook and submit their answers to review questions after each chapter. Next they complete 14 workplace GIS laboratory exercises. These exercises were written by HCCS faculty with the support of NSF (DUE-9850344). The final student activity is an independent GIS project. This project is frequently based upon the student's workplace.
Houston Community College, Houston, Texas, USA, is now in its third year of offering GIS certificates and an AAS degree. We are currently in our fourth semester of offering the beginning course "Introduction to GIS/GPS" as a Distance Education course. The Distance Education course must be generally similar to the classroom version, which is a 4 credit, 16 week or 96 hour course. Under our current rules students must begin the course at the start of a semester and can complete it as soon as they want but no later than the end of that semester. Course materials are not on our web site, but are checked out to the student on a CD at a required orientation session. After that all communications and submissions are over the web using class management software.
ArcView GIS software from Esri is the only software used in the course except for word processing. Most of the students begin with little or no knowledge of ArcView. They start the course by working through the tutorials in the text "Getting to Know ArcView GIS". We also use some of the materials on the Esri virtual campus. Their reading assignment to go along with these exercises is "How to Lie with Maps" by Mark Monmonier.
Besides the text assignments, students are completing a series of laboratory exercises. These are workplace exercises developed using the expertise of our advisory council. The exercises were written by the authors of this paper along with Dr. Gary Jeffress of TAMUCC and with the support of the National Science Foundation (DUE-9850344). Students have 14 exercises to complete or about 1 1/2 per week. This is the same number that the classroom students complete over the same time period. All of necessary data (except for one session on the web) and instructions are on the CD provided to them. Completed exercises by previous students are on display in the classroom but are not at this time on our web site.
During the main body of the course over about a 10 week period, they read "An Introduction to Geographical Information Systems" by Heywood, Cornelius and Carver. Any other standard GIS text could be substituted. This one has the advantage of including a set of review questions after each chapter. Students answer these questions and email their answers to the instructor. Completing this is the direct substitute for classroom lectures.
At the end of the semester, generally in the last three weeks, students have to complete an independent GIS project. Most of the students are older, average age 42, and are either working or recently unemployed. The project is typically something that they can use in their office. Alternatively, it may be something they can use in seeking employment. A few students have even been paid for their student project. The size of the project varies considerably depending mostly upon the student's employment situation.
Most of the students either have their employer buy ArcView or they buy the student edition. Houston Community College has locations all around Houston with open computer labs. These computer labs are open evenings and weekends with ArcView available on 2 or 3 computers. While having to drive in to a campus is somewhat contrary to Distance Education, this option has mostly been used by the unemployeds, who have seen such visits as an advantage. At the current time we have not had a student who did not live in the greater Houston area.
The course title is Introduction to Geographic Information Systems/Global Positioning Systems. The GPS part of the course is relatively minor, and in the HCCS curriculum is the main part of the second course. There is one chapter in the text devoted to GPS. In some of the exercises students are given data and told that these are collected using GPS units to be added into their GIS. Many students own their own GPS units and are generally more knowledgeable about GPS than about GIS. We have inexpensive GPS units to check out for students wishing to use them in projects.
Communications between instructor and students is via email. The class management software allows students to email each other. We also have various kinds of virtual meeting software. In general, students have shown no interest in such extra communications. This may have to do with the maturity of the students and their widespread use of email at their workplace.
Students must come to the campus twice. One visit is for orientation and the other is over a weekend near the end of the term for a monitored examination. . This exam is written and graded by the instructor, but is given by the Distance Education staff. Evaluations are based upon the exam and the 13 sets of review questions, 14 laboratory exercises, and an independent project. Student performance in the Distance Education course has been quite good as compared with the classroom students. However, the drop rate has been higher with most of the dropouts coming very early.
Kenneth L. Russell, Dean E. Ayres, Osborne Nye
Geology and GIS Department
Houston Community College, SW
10141 Cash Road
Stafford, TX, 77477
russell_k@hccs.cc.tx.us
phone 713-718-7763