By Robin “Buz” Kloot, Wes Standish, and Mark Evans
Earth Sciences and Resources Institute at the University of
South Carolina (Esri-USC) has partnered with the USDA’s Natural Resources
Conservation Service in South Carolina (SC-NRCS) to assist in the transfer of
GIS technology and to develop decision support systems (DSS). One of the
primary roles of Esri-USC is to provide ArcView®
training, in the framework of the NRCS Customer Service Toolkit, at the field
office level. While working with conservationists in more than 50 counties
throughout South Carolina and Mississippi, Esri-USC has recognized several
barriers that hinder the ability to learn and understand ArcView® and the Customer Service Toolkit. This paper discusses
these obstacles as well as recommends various training methods that enable one
to teach ArcView® more effectively to NRCS
staff.
In 1998, Esri-USC partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in South Carolina (NRCS-SC). “The intention was that Esri-USC would assist the NRCS in the development and implementation of a GIS-based Decision Support System (DSS) to promote environmentally sound planning of conservation systems, especially those concerning siting of Animal Feeding Operations (AFOs) and the utilization of animal manure”(Covington, et al., 2001). The development of these tools for use at the NRCS Field Office level requires that NRCS-SC Field Office staff be comfortable in the ArcView environment. As NRCS-SC began deployment of the Customer Service Toolkit as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) ongoing modernization effort, ArcView became available in many NRCS Field Offices across the state. The Customer Service Toolkit is a compilation of off the shelf products that create an environment for producing quality conservation planning products by USDA-NRCS Field Office Staff. “The Customer Service Toolkit is based on the need to provide high quality map and plan products to our customers…The Toolkit extends the functionality of the commercial software provided by the Common Computing Environment particularly Windows NT®, Microsoft Office® products, and Esri ArcView®” (USDA-NRCS, May, 2000). Esri-USC recognized that ArcView training at the Field Office level was essential to the successful implementation of its GIS-based DSS applications.
The main focus of this report is to give recommendations to cope with the many barriers associated with learning ArcView® in the Customer Service Toolkit structure. The many functions of ArcView®, and the steps that are required to complete them, can become frustrating to a new user. To ease this process, Esri-USC has come up with a very basic training methodology that will be discussed. Esri-USC stresses small group training practices based on 18 months spent with NRCS personnel in South Carolina and one month spent with NRCS staff in Mississippi.
The observations documented in this paper are based on training sessions in South Carolina from January, 2001 through June, 2002 and in Mississippi from August to September, 2001. In South Carolina Esri-USC has held training sessions in 30 counties with 49 individuals. Many of these 49 have been involved in multiple sessions. While in Mississippi, Esri-USC held training sessions with 59 representatives from 24 NRCS Field Offices and four area offices.
Esri-USC has observed five barriers that NRCS employees face when learning ArcVeiw. None of these barriers are unique to the NRCS and will be detected in other disciplines and settings.
CAMPS/FOCS “Syndrome” (Uncertainty)
The implementation of Customer Service Toolkit represents
the third software change in the NRCS in the last twelve years. Computer
Assisted Management and Planning System (CAMPS) and Field Office Computing
System (FOCS) are the predecessors to the Customer Service Toolkit in the NRCS
Field Office. Frustrated at having to learn a new system, Field Office staff
seemed to hold Toolkit in low regard before its introduction. The lack of support that these previous
software packages received has been observed by conservationists in the Field
Offices and has led to a preconceived lack of confidence in the Customer
Service Toolkit.
Workload
The job requirements
and other demands placed on Field Office staffs leave little time for learning
new software. For a new user, taking the time to work through a plan in ArcView
can mean lost time compared to preparing a plan using hard copy maps, a copy
machine and highlighter pens. The quality of the final product can be
questioned but the efficiency of its production cannot. Many of the NRCS Field
Office employees realize the benefits of utilizing ArcView. These benefits
include the high quality map products, the ability to quickly display several
planning scenarios, the accuracy of acreage calculation, and many others.
Finding time to learn how to take advantage of these benefits is the challenge
to NRCS Field Office staff.
Fatigue
This barrier is most
apparent during training sessions. Sitting in front of a computer monitor can
be very tiring for someone who is not accustomed to that in his or her daily
routine. This fact coupled with the task of learning new and complicated
software can lead to fatigue rather quickly. Once the student becomes tired,
the training session is less productive. Frustration and a lack of
concentration are among the products of this barrier. Whether working with a
group or an individual, the instructor needs to gauge this fatigue. It is
important to realize that there is a limit to what can be taught to an
individual in a single day. The ArcView skill set that is required of Toolkit
users cannot be obtained in a half-day session.
Data
The data barrier
refers to two distinct issues, the first being a lack of spatial data and the
second being a lack of knowledge about spatial data. Many counties in South
Carolina, for instance, have little or no coverage with aerial photography.
This gives the Field Office in those counties the perfect excuse not to learn
the software. The second issue associated with data is the conservationists’
lack of knowledge about what data he or she has in the office. Having full
Digital Ortho Quarter Quad (DOQQ) coverage of a county in a folder named “doqq”
is of no use if the person does not know that doqq refers to aerial
photography.
Steep Learning
Curve
The Customer Service
Toolkit gives the user the option of planning with or without ArcView. The
steps in producing a plan and contract are easily followed on a cheat sheet put
together by someone who is familiar with the program. This planning process,
because it is somewhat intuitive to those with experience using Microsoft
Office, has also been self-taught through experimentation.
ArcView is more difficult to learn and its concepts and processes are not as intuitive to most users. Although many NRCS Field Office staff have the ability to lean ArcView on their own, most require some training that takes them from beginning to end in the conservation planning process in Toolkit using ArcView. The learning curve associated with ArcView is much steeper than the curve associated with Toolkit not using ArcView.
The Esri-USC training practices follow a simple common sense, step by step approach to teaching ArcView®/Toolkit. The session begins with the Toolkit basics and migrates slowly into ArcView®. Once the session has shifted to ArcView®, the basics of the program should be discussed briefly, in simple terms that will not intimidate new users. Digitizing, the core of conservation planning with ArcView in the NRCS, should be the major theme of the first day of training. From here, the trainer should slowly move into buffers, structural practices, resource inventory themes and the other Toolkit Buttons. All of this should be in the context of a real conservation plan that has been completed or that needs to be completed. This pragmatic approach makes the training session productive for the trainee, both in accomplishing training and in meeting the workload.
In March, 2000 Esri-USC’s initial training approach required field conservationists to travel to Columbia to attend an ArcView® training course with the USC Department of Geography. Like the similar course held at Mississippi State University for NRCS-MS personnel, it dealt with spatial data that was irrelevant to Conservation Planning. For instance, part of the data included the location of barbecue restaurants in South Carolina. While these courses provide a general introduction to ArcView® concepts and capabilities, they cannot take the place of individual training with significant data. Moreover, it was found that these newly acquired skills are quickly lost if the user does not apply them immediately.
Since then, Esri-USC’s philosophy on teaching GIS has stressed personal interaction between the trainer and the student and the use of local data. Individual training may not be the most efficient plan in terms of the quantity of people trained, but the quality of training is extremely valuable. Communication between the NRCS Field Offices is frequent and many times technical support is obtained from a neighboring Field Office. Because of this establishment, the ArcView student often becomes the teacher. Existing communication paths between the Field Offices allow many people to learn through the quality individual training of one. Individual training coupled with local data that mirrors a conservationist’s daily workload puts ArcView® into context at the NRCS Field Office level.
Working individually with a trainee allows the trainer to alter the session to account for the strengths and weaknesses of the individual. The content and pace of the session should be dependent on the trainee’s level of comfort. This “level of comfort” refers to the student’s experience in three areas that are essential to ArcView/Toolkit: General computer environment skills (especially Windows NT Explorer), the Toolkit environment (without ArcView), and their understanding of the spatial data that needs to be used for planning. Assessment of their knowledge of these skill sets becomes evident quickly in the training session.
Toolkit is structured so that the user has to start in Windows NT Explorer to copy Customer Files from a central machine (NRCS-SC is now in the process of migrating to servers) to the local machine. In some cases, this is where the training session begins.
Walk through the steps of copying from the central machine or server and explain what is happening in very basic terms. Terms such as uploading to the server and downloading from the server have an intimidating quality to a novice Windows user (much like the term digitizing in ArcView) as opposed to the terms copy and paste. Esri-USC has found that the concepts involved with Explorer seem to come best to a new user with experience, so keep this section brief. Obviously, a complete understanding of file structures and data management cannot be obtained in a morning of training, so have the student keep detailed notes of the exact steps that they take to copy a folder from the central machine and vice versa. This will help eliminate any mistakes in the future when the trainer is not present.
Once the Customer File is in place on the local drive, the Toolkit interface is accessed through Microsoft Outlook. Finding the correct customer from the Toolkit Folder .pst is intuitive even to most inexperienced users. The trainee’s degree of comfort in the Toolkit Planning Environment becomes apparent after the contact is found and the corresponding folder is opened. If the person goes into either the Land Units tab or the Customer Folder tab then there is some degree of experience with Toolkit. If the student is unsure of what to do at this point then this is the beginning of the session.
When teaching Toolkit to someone for the first time, it is important to focus on the steps of the process and not the links and relationships that these steps are employing, such as the link between the Access Database and the Excel Spreadsheets, or eventually with ArcView. The relationship between the .pst and the actual customer folder in Windows NT Explorer is also difficult for new users to understand. Instead of explaining the relationship, it is often better to explain the rules of the relationship. For instance, let the student know that the “X” button in Outlook is not to be used to delete files. This will delete the contact, and ultimately, the user’s link to that customer file. A basic understanding of the relationships that connect the components of Toolkit is only obtained with experience. The trainer should not expect to teach these in one session. Giving a simple explanation of what is happening is sufficient in the beginning.
The final of the three observations that the trainer should take note of concerning the student’s comfort level is the knowledge of the spatial data and the degree to which the person can associate between what they have experienced on the ground and what is visible on the aerial photography. The most obvious indicator has been the person’s ability to locate the Digital Ortho Quarter Quad that contains the desired tract of land. There are a number of techniques for finding the correct photograph. One of these uses the hard copy USGS Topo Quad sheets that are present in each Field Office while another uses a grid of the quarter quads shapefile and a road network shapefile in the county. The assessment of the student’s level of comfort will determine which of the many techniques the trainer teaches.
There
is a certain point in each day of training
when the student is no longer learning. Knowing when this point has arrived can
prevent frustration for both the student and the teacher. The point of overload
arrives at different times for each individual and can be dependent on many
outside factors. When faced with this situation the trainer should either end
the session or work on a less complex concept or technique. It is important to
realize that most of the information being taught is new and although the
teacher may have discussed a concept several times, the student may not have
actually learned it.
The demands placed on conservationists in the NRCS Field Office are tremendous. One of the major goals of the implementation of ArcView/Toolkit is to handle this workload more efficiently. Because of the steep learning curve discussed earlier, learning ArcView can be a hindrance to output in the short term. To make up for this Esri-USC stresses the use of real plans in the training process. Choose a plan that the specific Field Office must complete. A useful output at the end of a day of training will give the student confidence in the program and in the teacher.
The transfer of GIS technology is taking place in NRCS-SC with the assistance of Esri-USC and somewhat of a grassroots approach throughout the agency. In early 2001 very few Field Offices in South Carolina were using ArcView/Toolkit. Today the majority of the Field Offices are utilizing Toolkit for producing conservation plans and contracts while more than twenty offices are using ArcView to produce the associated conservation plan map.
Recognizing the barriers to learning ArcView, Esri-USC
established a training strategy that accounts for these barriers and assists
NRCS conservationists in overcoming them. The training philosophy emphasizes
one-on-one interaction between the teacher and the student and stresses the use
of local data and projects that parallels the workload that the conservationist
faces daily.
References
Customer Service Toolkit Deployment Plan, May 2000. USDA-NRCS.
“Customer Service Toolkit: USDA
Looks to the Future of Desktop GIS in a Mobile Computing Environment,” 1999.
USDA-NRCS and Synergetics Inc.
“A GIS Decision Support Tool for Animal Feeding Operations Siting and Nutrient Management,” 2000. Elzbieta Covington, Robin “Buz” Kloot, and James B. Atkins.