Kenneth L. Russell, Dean E. Ayres, and Sydney Elliott

WORKPLACE  EXERCISES ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB

This project supported  by the NSF (DUE-9850344) has produced 37 laboratory exercises for two semesters of introductory college-level GIS courses.The authors received advice and data from the HCCS-GIS Advisory Board consisting of 21 representatives from the private and public sectors of the workplace. The exercises are also related to sections of the NCGIA-GIS curriculum projects. GIS instructors from twelve partner colleges reviewed the exercises in a workshop last August. Based on their suggestions the exercises have been edited, expanded, and grouped into several application areas including environment, community development, marketing and utilities. We will illustrate a web site describing the project (http://swc2.cc.tx.us/gis/index.html) including links to the exercises and data sets. We will publish the materials on the internet and CD-ROM.

INTRODUCTION

The use of GIS/GPS in the workplace has moved over the past several years from mainframe manipulation by highly-trained specialists to desktop PCs operated by technicians with two-year degrees.  Workplace datasets are typically much larger and more complex than are used in tutorials with the GIS software. Houston Community College System, with National Science Foundation support,has produced a package of GIS and GPS laboratory exercises based upon workplace scenarios. which are being made progressively available on CD-ROM and the internet to interested instructors.

HCCS INSTRUCTIONAL COMPUTING RESOURCE CENTER

Houston Community College System has a very pro-active and diversified ICRC group which has committed to working with the GIS/GPS content experts in designing the Web page content of the project. They have also  pressed the preliminary CD-ROMs which have been sent to our college partners to test the exercises.for testing . The large size of the data sets, up to several hundred MB, has necessitated the use of CD-ROM media, as the most efficient means of communication.
These exercises and the corresponding datasets were made available on CD-Rom for our community college partners to evaluate first hand. Instructors from a cross-section of community colleges in the USA ( California, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Minnesota, Texas and Virginia) have participated. Our version 1 (22 exercises) was distributed in January, 1999, followed by version 2 (30 exercises) in February and version 3 in November following editing after an August workshop. This distribution schedule allowed teachers to test the exercises in their classrooms in both spring and fall 1999 semesters and spring 2000 prior to final evaluation in May 2000.
 

TRAINING OF STUDENTS

Our approach, which we believe is unique, emphasizes hands-on exercises that illustrate GIS and cartographic principles but use realistic workplace themes and datasets. Each student , whether on site or in a distance education class has the same exercises and data avaialble on a server hard drive or CD-ROM. and are asked to publishes his work, including exercises and a final workplace-based project, in a personal portfolio. The  project is now required to be in a form that can be made available on the WWW as a concrete example of their final work..
 

INTERNET WEB SITE DETAILS

We have produced a web site (http://swc2.hccs.cc.tx.us/gis/index.html) describing the project. There is a main page for the NSF Grant describing the award and a series of additional links to the main areas below The Instructors Guide and the Completed Exercises are the main working pages. Although there is only a skeletal framework for the Instructors Guide it is intended that a more complete version will be available following final evaluation by our participants. The Completed Exercises page has become more fully developed and includes two main sections. A Resource Information link provides a list of all completed exercises, web links to appropriate data sources, the software and data sets needed to complete the individual exercises and size of the data sets. The actual exercises are grouped in the following application areas - Environment,  Urban Development/Facilities Management, Marketing, Emergency Management and Fundamental and Advanced GIS/GPS Mapping. Within these groups individual exercises can be selected. The actual exercise is a "bare bones" student version, that is, the essential information and data an instructor would hand out to each student. A more extensive "Instructor" version with rpobable answers and intermediate and final maps will be included with the instructors guide.
 

INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS

The ICRC is in the process of producing eight videos that show real uses of GIS/GPS by currently employed professionals from a variety of companies. The videos focus on implememtations such as city planning, bus routing and coordination, emergency management planning and gas pipeline tracking. They do not try to match, one-on-one, the exercises, but do present overall concepts that are addressed in several of the labs.It has been our experience, during workshops for new-to-GIS/GPS faculty that these kinds of real-life presentations make the subject more concrete, understadable and exciting to the viewer. They could also be used as a marketing tool during or before student registration. The videos can be pressed to CD and distributed, along with the relevant exercises to GIS/GPS faculty and students.
 

WHERE WE ARE HEADED

Our plan for continuing evaluation is to bring our beta-tester partners to a 4 day workshop in Houston in May of 2000. By this time the exercises will have been edited again based on our spring and summer experiences and we will be testing the remaining exercises primarily in  GPS and ennvironmental application areas . Participants will test and critically evaluate the exercises as well as the visual scenarios which the ICRC will then add  the final CD-Rom versions of the workplace exercises. The exact form the material available on the WWW will take is still under examination by our ICRC staff.
Kenneth L. Russell, Dean E. Ayres, Geology and Geographic Information Science Department and Sydney Elliott,
 Instructional Computing Resource Center
Houston Community College System, Southwest College