Group Learning and GIS Education
C. Victor
Wu
A vast majority of GIS projects require more than one individual to complete. In today’s competitive marketplace teamwork is essential to GIS applications and to many other fields (Millis & Cottell 1998). Successful teamwork promises GIS projects delivered on time and in good quality. The reason is evident: the whole is greater than the sum of parts. Having said that, one should recognize the hard work behind collaboration. Successful teamwork does not happen naturally. Team members may not always be on an amicable term. People with diverse backgrounds may experience difficulties in communication. Dysfunctional teamwork spells project delay, unreliable products and lousy service. It takes leadership, cooperation and good communication to keep teamwork afloat.
Working in a team requires a set of skills and abilities that are different from working on an individual basis. For some individuals, teamwork presents a steep learning curve to conquer. The intrinsic group dynamics is not only different from one team to another, but also can change from one moment to the next. Unfortunately, mainstream GIS education tends to overlook the importance of teamwork and leave students to develop abilities and skills needed to work in a team on their own. This paper argues that GIS educators need to put developing students’ teamwork abilities/skills on the map of education. While GIS education is not limited to training for jobs, a majority of students do come to our programs with a hope to acquire a job in the GIS marketplace after graduation. Indeed, most of them enter the job market immediately after graduation. We need to prepare them for a very competitive marketplace, which requires them to work in a team situation.
This paper starts with an overview of principles of group/cooperative learning. It continues to examine how GIS is currently delivered in higher education and how cooperative learning can be incorporated into GIS education. The author will then share his experience in implementing a cooperative learning curriculum of GIS.
Group learning is a pedagogical approach in which students work in small groups to master academic materials. This approach favors class activities designed to invite students’ participation. Lecturing, in which students passively receive information from an instructor is not prohibited but avoided if possible. Education research (Slavin 1992; Millis & Gottel 1998) indicates that unstructured or ill-structured group learning yields limited benefits. Rather, many education researchers (Slavin & Karweit 1981; Slavin 1992; Millis & Gottel 1998) advocate for corporative learning, a structured form of group learning that promotes corporation, social bonding (Hertz-Lazarowitz, Kerkus & Miller 1992), and positive interdependence (Johnson & Johnson 1999) in group work. For this reason, this paper will stay with the concept and techniques of cooperative learning.
Preparing for workplace is not the sole reason for which educators should seriously consider group learning as a pedagogy. Educators (Ferguson & Forte 1995; Millis & Cottell 1998; Harreid 1998) in different fields and the government agency (National Research Council [NRC] 1996) in charge of educational policy recommend cooperative learning, on the ground of the following benefits:
1. Cooperative learning increases students’ performance level on a certain type of tasks, including complex tasks that carry a heavy load, taking tests, and problem-solving (Slavin 1992; Johnson & Johnson 1999). Studies show that cooperative learning does not yield a superior outcome on students’ short-term knowledge retention rate. Instead, cooperative learning seems to facilitate development of metacognitive strategies that are useful in analyzing and relating problems and in synthesizing information (Mevarech 1999).
2. Social interaction positively changes students’ motivation of and affective attitude toward learning (Millis & Cottel 1998). Many studies (Johnson & Johnson 1999; Morgan, Whorton, & Gunsalus 2000) report that students tend to develop a higher level of self-esteem in cooperative learning compared to the lecturing mode.
3. Through collaboration and interaction students acquire a certain type of knowledge that is otherwise unattainable. For example, discussion is very effective to expose students to multiple perspectives held by people of different backgrounds. Piaget (1926) also identifies a set of social-arbitrary knowledge such as language, values, rules, morality and symbol systems, which can only be learned through interaction with other human beings.
4. Properly structured cooperative activities indirectly help reinforce knowledge retention and association. Cognitive psychologists (Anderson 1985; Wittrock 1986) hold that learning is a process in which a learner construct associations of new information to existing knowledge stored in one’s memory. Activities such as reciprocal teaching (Slavin 1992) and concept mapping (Novak 1998) encourage students to perform high order learning--articulate and synthesize information.
5. Students will develop social and team skills through many cooperative learning activities. Although one needs not reemphasize this notion, educators (Millis & Cottell 1998) also suggest that it is better for students to develop these skills early in their academic career.
Note that any pedagogy is aimed at increasing learning effectiveness. Of course, there is an additional goal for increasing group productivity in cooperative learning. Nonetheless, group productivity is dependent at least partial upon individual members’ ability. If individual teammates possess no skills or knowledge needed to perform a task, putting them into a group may not help the situation. Therefore, even in cooperative learning the goal of individual learning effectiveness should be taken as seriously as that of group productivity. Slavin (1992) also reminds us of that learning is a completely individual outcome that may or may not be improved by cooperation (p. 150). How do we, then assure learning effectiveness at a certain level in cooperative learning? The key is a structure to ensure cooperation which leads to group productivity and individual accountability. This structure as stated earlier distinguishes cooperative learning from group learning in which students simply work in groups.
GIS has been largely delivered to spur intellectual growth and to train applied skills on an individual basis. Many GIS courses may include a semester-end project, in which students work in small groups to deliver a GIS product. As will be discussed later in this paper, a group project does not qualify a course for a cooperative learning one (Johnson & Johnson 1999). Some fundamental changes need to be made to the course design philosophy and delivering method to encourage cooperative learning. This section examines how GIS is delivered in education and suggests the measures to be taken to make the course cooperative-learning-friendly.
Lectures
Lectures may be the most common mode of class activities in GIS education as in other discipline. Lecturing is effective in delivering information. But, it falls short in cultivating higher level of cognition (Bridges 1992, Barrows 1996, Gijselaers 1996). Furthermore, lectures given by an instructor tend to be in one-way communication and facilitate no cooperative learning. A structure for cooperative learning can mitigate these shortcomings to a certain extent. Just as teaching usually forces us to acquire a deeper understanding of a subject matter, student can be a better learner under the pressure to give a lecture. This is a commonly used cooperative learning technique called reciprocal teaching. Student groups are assigned to prepare a lecture on a manageable topic. Expectations on the lecture should be made clear to students. It can be the whole group or an individual chosen randomly that physically delivers the lecture.
Discussion
Discussion is an effective means to expose students to different perspectives from which an issue can be viewed. For instance, we discussed whether public data providers should recoup the costs of data production by charging users with a high fee. When used properly, it is also possible to build consensus from diverse viewpoints. Nonetheless, learning effectiveness of discussion diminishes as the class size increases (Millis & Cottell 1998). By dividing the class into small group we can ensure a full and even participation. The small group size demands every member to participate. There may still be one or two individuals that dominate the dialog. The other students simply withdraw or hold back. To circumvent the problem, each student can be given an equal amount of talking chips (Millis & Cottell 1998). It works this way. One has to spend a chip when one wishes to express one’s opinion. When one’s talking chips are used up, one can only be a listener leaving the opportunities to talk to others. However, every member is expected to use up his/her talking chips in the end of discussion. Penalties will be applied when one has unused chips. The other effective technique for assuring individual accountability is to assign each member a different role in the discussion process. For instance, each group needs a moderator, a note taker, and a reporter to report group discussion results to the whole class. Teammates trade their roles in the next discussion session in order for everyone to have the opportunity to assume these responsibilities.
Group projects
Many GIS courses have a semester-end project, in which students are to complete a hands-on assignment at their choice. The nature of the project ranges from database construction, to programming, to user-interface design, to data analysis. This project is intended to put students into a real-world problem solving situation. However, my experience has been that this type of projects works less well if it is the sole cooperative learning activity in a class. It takes time to build trust and cooperation among group members. In a newly assembled group, members often spend much time adapting to each other’s behavioral patterns and thus leave little time on the project itself.
Another common problem in group projects is diffusion of responsibility in which individual members are rewarded even if they themselves made little contribution to the group (Slavin 1992). It is not uncommon that a group project falls onto one or two individuals’ shoulders. Not only is it unfair, but also are little cooperative learning benefits realized. Cooperative learning experts (Johnson & Johnson 1992; Millis & Cottell 1998) advocate that a proper structure, such as resource independence is the key to make individuals accountable in a group task. Resource independence asks an instructor to divide up resources in a way that each member has a portion of it and they have to cooperate to produce the desirable outcome. This, to some extent, violates the semester’s project’s underlying philosophy that grants students the liberty to choose and develop their own project. Besides, the very fact that students determine and develop these projects on their own make it difficulty for the instructor to divide necessary resources. Fortunately, when students have been working in a group for the most part of a semester, they tend to become trusted and cooperative with each other (Johnson & Johnson 1992). The trust, social bonding, and teamwork skills they have developed in the semester seem to reduce behavioral problems one may find in a newly assembled group.
Lab exercises
Lab exercises are common in GIS courses only second to lectures. Tasks, such as system operation and programming in lab exercises are mostly individualistic activities. Furthermore, most computer labs are designed to allow each student to have a dedicated system. That several students are sharing a system is often deemed detrimental to learning. Such a setting, however, misses great cooperative learning opportunities. Properly structured lab exercises not only allow for cooperative learning but also hold individuals accountable for their share of learning. Several techniques can be used to convert conventional lab exercises into cooperative learning exercises. For instance, resource independence as described earlier is a useful technique to ensure both group work and individual accountability. Further discussion related to lab exercise will be made in the next section.
The GIScience program at Samford University consists of six courses: a map interpretation course, a remote sensing course, a physical geography course, and three GIS courses following the model proposed by the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) Core Curriculum (NCGIA 1990). The program is small but has a successful track record in career placement. In 1998 I started to introduce cooperative learning in the three GIS courses. Initially the adoption was slow and in a piecemeal fashion. Two years later, I decided to immerse all courses in the cooperative learning methods.
In the three GIS courses, students were assigned to permanent groups of three or four at the beginning of the semester. Group assignment was totally under my control to ensure that each group has a balanced mixture of different demographic and academic backgrounds. Class time was also reserved for team building, in which student partake in activities designed for building trusts among teammates. Most class activities, with a few exceptions such as three individualistic exams and mini-lectures, were conducted in a cooperative learning fashion. Mini-lectures were used more often in the introductory course where students need a bit more guidance. In the advanced class, no lectures were initially scheduled. However, I sometimes gave lectures at the request of a majority of students.
In addition to the activities mentioned in the last section, mini-projects or problem based learning (PBL) modules form the core activities of our class. They were designed to cover conceptual theories as well as operational skills. There were no conventional lab sessions because a module may require a variety of different activities. In one module students are asked to identify the relationships between map scale and cartographic generalization; in another module, students are sent to search for databases. Table 1 lists some of the modules used in our class and the activities/tasks involved.
|
Table 1. exemplar cooperative activities in a GIS course |
|||
|
Topic |
Types of activity |
Individual tasks |
Group tasks |
|
Digitizing and Georeferencing |
Data Construction |
Digitize portions of an Alabama map |
Create an AI coverage of Alabama |
|
Scale and Generalization |
Text reading and map reading |
Search for evidence of map generalization |
Report on relationships between map scale and map generalization |
|
Point distribution patterns |
Programming and research |
Research methods for quantifying point distribution patterns |
Create an AML program for calculating point distribution indices |
|
Site selection |
System operation |
Identify data sources and proper AI commands |
Create a map of final selection and a lab journal |
|
Uncertainties and errors in data |
Brainstorming |
Play different roles in the GIS data food chain |
Report on how best to report and represent uncertainties and errors in spatial data |
These modules are written with the following considerations in mind:
1. Whenever possible, these modules are staged in a real world context so that students can relate to the problem.
2. A structure to facilitate cooperative learning is implemented in the format of these modules. For instance, students may be assigned to different tasks such as data processor, bookkeeper, reporter, etc., such that individual responsibilities can be delineated. Resource independence is also a useful structure to encourage cooperation (Johnson & Johnson 1992). In one of the course modules, every team is to create an ARCINFO coverage of the State of Alabama from individually digitized files of different parts of the State. In this module, the group product is dependent upon a) thoroughly edited coverages provided by individual members, and b) joint efforts to register data in a coordinate system and join maps together.
3. Most modules can be completed in one or two class meets. Modules that require a longer period of time to complete are suffer from two problems: a) students’ attention span and interest decreases as the project during increases, and b) it is more difficult to schedule these modules.
4. Each module should end with a quantifiable outcome, which usually involves a combination of an oral presentation, a written report, along with GIS products such as a database or maps.
5. These modules are usually written in stages so that intermediate outcomes can be reviewed and evaluated. At each stage a differing level of information or resources are disclosed to students. This stage-structure saves students from over-frustration by always giving them proper feedback.
Comparisons
were made between the courses in the cooperative learning method and that in
the traditional approach. I was
particularly interested in two aspects related to learning: achievement
outcomes and affective measures. The
purpose here is to examine students’ performance in and attitude toward the
course in these two treatments.
Achievement
outcomes measured students’ gain in mastering of course content. On the final exam, students in cooperative
learning scored significantly highly (81.05 out of 100) than did students in the
traditional method (72.23). Note that
the comparison was drawn from classes that were two years apart. Parameters that could have affected the test
results were not rigorously controlled.
Increase in test score may not be attributed to pedagogical differences
alone. The small enrollments of these
classes could make any quantitative measure obscured due to one especially
strong or weak student. Many other more
studies (Slavin, 1992; Chang & Mao 1999; Morgan, Whorton & Gunsalus
2000) report that students in cooperative learning may not outperform those
taught using the more traditional approach on the knowledge-level and
comprehension level tests.
Perhaps
the instructor’s observation, although subjective, offers a useful insight into
students’ performance level. One
significant effect cooperative learning had on students’ achievement can be
found on their semester project. It may
be no surprise that group projects are more sophisticated and of a higher
quality than individual-based semester projects. The quality of group projects in a class where cooperative
learning had been used throughout the semester was also significantly higher
than that in a class where cooperative learning was introduced solely for the
purpose of the project. As discussed earlier,
it took time to develop social bonding and interdependence among group
members. A one-time group assembly
worked less well than a permanent group in which members become friends to each
other.
Affective
measures assessed students’ responses and attitudes toward the course. This is the area where one can expect to see
consistent effects of cooperative learning.
For instance, attendance improved in a cooperative learning class. In the traditional class, on average a
student missed 4.6 class meets whereas in the cooperative learning class, a
student missed 1.7 class meets. This
study also concurs with many researches on cooperative learning in that
students tend to have a higher level of self-esteem in a cooperative learning
environment. On six questions related
to problem solving attitudes, students in cooperative learning reported a
higher level of scores than those in the traditional lecturing method (Table
2). Although the difference in the
end-of-course evaluation (refer to question 3 in Table 2) was not as drastic as
other measures, students in cooperative learning were significantly more ready
for and capable of identifying appropriate resources. Many students also expressed that they felt good about being able
to help others and about being able to figure out many problems on their
own.
|
Table
2. End of course evaluation on problem solving related issues (score are
measured on scare of 5) |
|||
|
No. |
Question |
Control
Group |
Experimental Group (cooperative learning) |
|
1 |
This course increased my ability to solve real-world problems |
3.04 |
3.96 |
|
2 |
This course encouraged me to consider alternatives when solving problems |
2.16 |
4.05 |
|
3 |
This course improved my ability to identify appropriate resources |
3.12 |
3.99 |
|
4 |
This course increased my ability to work effectively on a team |
2.49 |
4.52 |
|
5 |
This course encouraged me to take an active role in my learning |
3.22 |
4.00 |
|
6 |
I have used knowledge and methods drawn from outside this course to complete my course assignments |
3.84 |
4.19 |
There
were negative comments on cooperative learning, especially when a group
suffered from behavioral problems.
Students, including those who had caused the problems, often felt
victimized by a grading system based group performance. In fact, even in a class where cooperative
learning was used throughout the semester, group grades never accounted for
more than 40% of the total grade. The
other interesting finding was that low performance students were the least
appreciative of cooperative learning even though the approach tended to help their
grades. Their major complaints: too
much work.
In a GIScience education context, the benefits from cooperative learning lie in three areas: 1) the social bonding and interaction among students, 2) metacognitive or problem solving skills, and 3) communication and teamwork skills. But, cooperative learning is not a remedy for every problem. At the rote knowledge level, cooperative learning may not result in more favorable learning outcomes than does the traditional lecturing method.
The concept and the practice of cooperative learning may not be new to GIScience educators. Group projects are a staple in may GIS courses. However, miracle does not happen simply because students are put in groups. A structure that encourages cooperation is needed for these group activities to become cooperative learning activities (Millis & Cottell, 1998). Based on my experience, cooperative learning produces better results when the class is totally immersed into the method. Switching between cooperative learning and competitive learning causes students’ confusion, and undermines the momentum of teamwork. However, other educators (Morgan, Whorton, & Gunsalus 2000) consider proper selection and mixing of cooperative and individualistic methods maximize learning effectiveness.
An instructor using cooperative learning also needs to learn a new role to play in classroom (Millis & Cottell 1998). Rather than directing everything in the instructor’s own way, one has to learn to listen to students and to be an effective facilitators, helping students at the right time in the right way. It may not be a comfortable position to take for most instructors are used to controlling the class. By the same token, cooperative learning may not be an easy ride for students, either. They have to unlearn many habits cultivated in the traditional learning mode. For example, so used to being told what to learn, many students feel disoriented and lost when they have to identify their own learning issues. With proper couching by the instructor, most students will overcome their psychological fear over time. In the end, cooperative learning can be a very rewarding experience to the students and the instructor alike.
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