GEOTEKS: Using GIS and Multimedia Tools for Middle School Social Studies

Context

There is in Texas, as in many areas, a new impetus from the state level to improve geography and social studies. At the same time, state recommended guidelines for teacher appraisals include teaching with technology and increasingly student centered pedagogy. Greater availability of classroom computers combined with low cost computer tools for electronic mapping seem to encourage the use of technology to assist in teaching social studies at the middle school level.  The crossing of these different themes at this point in time provide the focus for this paper.

In late summer 1997 the Texas State Board of Education approved State Board and Commissioner Rules which the Texas Education Agency had caused to be published in the Texas Register in May 1997.  These guidelines are known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).  The TEKS replaced earlier standards based guidelines, which were called Essential Elements or EE's.  The new TEKS, which become effective September 1, 1998 are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.tea.state.tx.us./teks/   The TEKS cover all grades from kindergarten through grade twelve.

This paper is focused on Chapter 113, the essential knowledge and skills in social studies at the middle school level, specifically the seventh grade which is known as "Texas History."  Chapter 113 of the TEKS covers history, geography, economics, government, citizenship, culture, science and technology, and social studies skills under the social studies umbrella, but the more narrow focus of this paper is geography and general social studies skills.
 
Beginning with the 1997-1998 school year, all school districts in Texas have two choices in selecting a method to appraise teachers: either the teacher-appraisal system recommended by the Texas commissioner of education or an approved local teacher-appraisal system.  The commissioner's recommended teacher-appraisal system, the Professional Development and Appraisal System (PDAS) is published in Chapter 150 of the Texas Administrative Code.  Each of the appraisal domains have implications in the teaching of social studies at the middle school level.  Domain I appraises active, successful student participation in the learning process.  Domain II appraises learner-centered instruction, and makes explicit the requirement that the teacher makes appropriate and effective use of available technology as a part of the instructional process.  Domain III appraises the evaluation and feedback on student progress.  Domain IV appraises on management of discipline, instructional strategies, time, and materials.  Domain V appraises on professional communication.  Domain VI appraises professional development.  Domain VII appraises compliance with policies, operating procedures, and requirements.  Domain VIII. Improvement of academic excellence for all students on the computer. The Texas Education Agency has established a goal of learner-centered schools throughout the state (TEA, October 1995).
 

Background

Another dynamic of this evolution was the origin of the leadership guiding the evolutionary process.  From the early days of public schooling until the early 1900s the teachers and to some extent the publishers of texts guided the independent disciplines that now make up social studies: history, geography and civics.  At the turn of the century, leadership from academic scholars and university professors began to be the norm.  This lasted for a period of twenty to twenty-five years, but then the influence of the teacher educator began to rise again.  During the 1920s the general scope and sequence of social studies was established that remains with us to a certain extent event today.  Texas does not always follow the traditional scope and sequence.  Teacher educator influence has lasted into the modern times, but issues of the mode and methods have in their recurring cycles impacted the resulting norms. The ideas of progressive education, problem solving, thinking and reasoning, and social ideals became part of the curriculum from the early 1900s through the post-Sputnik reforms of the 1960s.

Social studies has not been immune for the cycles of public opinion and political influences.  For example during the period from the end of World War II though the 1960s the social milieu was "we are more alike than different" and so social studies was color-blind.  Race relations and ethnicity was basically ignored.  Learning activities encouraged doing, looking at culture, and geography was taught in terms of geographic determinism.  Following Sputnik the scramble to reform math and science eventually came to geography and social studies.  The influences of the Vietnam struggle and movement toward diversity led to the conclusion that we memorized too much at the expense of understanding, we were too tied to so-called Western ideas, and we began to celebrate our racial and ethnic diversity.  In recent years we have been influence by a conservative political climate, and "back to the basics" has become the guiding thrust.  It was during the transition from diversity to basics that the standards movement began to exert influence, and an attempt to put the United States back into a preeminent global position of competitive power.
 
The set of knowledge and skills contained in Chapter 113 did not originate with the Texas Education Agency.  The TEKS were the evolutionary products of the standards movement in social studies, geography, and history. Maier (1997) suggests that the precipitating event for the current cycle of education reform and standards movement was the publishing of the report "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1993).  Among the recommendations of the commission were emphasis on content, including social studies; standards; expectations; time; teaching; leadership and fiscal support.

Title I of the Educate America Act (Public Law 103-227), also known as Goals 2000 enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1994 included geography as one of the core subjects for K-12 education.  Title II of the Act established the National Education Standards and Improvement Council to work with appropriate organizations to determine and establish voluntary standards.  The Texas initiative in support of Goals 2000 is called Academics 2000. The purpose of Academics 2000 is to "raise the level of academic achievement of all Texas students by ensuring that each child achieves early mastery of the foundation subjects of reading, English language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science.

As guideline work had already been going on since the mid 1980s, the results for the geography and social studies community was published that same year as the national geography standards, Geography for Life (1994). There are eighteen standards subsumed under the themes: The World in Spatial Terms, Places and Regions, Physical Systems, Human Systems, Environment and Society, and Uses of Geography (pp. 34-35).  The standards are outcome based and are broadly phrased in terms of understanding.  Five broad skills are also identified to support these outcomes:

1. Asking geographic questions.
2. Acquiring geographic information.
3. Organizing geographic information.
4. Analyzing geographic information.
5. Answer geographic questions.

Similarly, the National Council for the Social Studies (1994) has developed a set of curriculum standards with ten social studies themes that serve as strands for social studies curriculum at every school level.  These include a) culture; b) time, continuity and change; c) people, places and environments; d) individual development and identity; e) individuals, groups and institutions; f) power, authority and governance; g) production, distribution and consumption; h) science, technology, and society; i) global connections; and j) civic ideals and practices. These guidelines make explicit these principles:
 

1. Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are meaningful.
2. Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are integrative.
3. Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are value-based.
4. Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are challenging.
5. Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are active.

From the progressive education concepts of the early 1900s to the active learning, critical thinking skills approaches of the present time, there is often insufficient time in the current school calendar to use constructivist ideas to teach social studies, no matter how well they might accomplish the task.  The second "T," teachers refers to the fact that with too little training and preparation or the teacher is unwilling and frequently unable use constructivist methods.  The third "T" refers to treasure or the lack of sufficient financial resources to implement the new curricula concepts.  This exerts a strong influence upon the other two "Ts" as well.

Two other threads or cross-currents in geography and social studies that arose out of the 1980's are worth mentioning.  The first involves the roles that the student is being prepared to exercise.  At various times, in various ways, the student is assumed to be becoming: a citizen, a worker, a consumer, a family member, a friend, a member of a social group, and of course a unique individual person, or self (Superka & Hawke, 1982).  The second issue is best expressed by the problems identified by Project SPANS (Morrissette, 1982):

• Student Learning.  Many students leave school without the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are important and desirable outcomes of social studies programs.  In addition, many students do not like or value social studies as much as other subjects.
• The Culture of the School.  The culture and organization of schools, especially at the secondary level, focus much of the energy of teachers and administrators on matters of management and control rather than on the teaching and learning of social studies -- particularly the teaching and learning of higher level thinking skills, participation skills, and democratic values.
• Teaching Practices.  Instruction in social studies is generally characterized by the lack of variety in teaching methods and evaluation practices, by limited kinds of learning experiences, and by inattention to the implications of educational research.
• The Curriculum.  The social studies curriculum -- courses, materials, and content -- is focused primarily on specific facts and broad conclusions from history and other social science disciplines rather than on critical thinking skills, social science concepts, values and attitudes, and social participation.  The curriculum, moreover, is not based on student developmental needs and does not emphasize important societal issues and effective participation in the social world.
• The Profession.  Parts of the social studies profession, in varying degrees, are characterized by considerable disagreement on the most important goals and objectives of social studies and by a decided lack of direction, satisfaction, opportunity for professional growth, and constructive interaction among the various participants.
• Public Support.  There is insufficient public support for and understanding of social studies programs that are balanced, judicious in responding to special interests, supportive of democratic values, scientifically and educationally sound, and relevant to the present and future lives of the students.

Purpose

 

 
 Figure 1.  GEOTEKS Model.

The Willis model involves input from stakeholders in order to produce the instructional design.  Similar design models have been common in commercial software development for a number of years (Metzger, 1970) even though they relied primarily on the behaviorist instructional design model.  The Willis design model as published, however, does not emphasize the choice of different stakeholders in formulating the original design.  While it is common to market test educational software with actual students, there is little evidence of including learners in the design process itself.  As a major part of this dissertation, it is proposed that the model be extended by use of structured focus groups of students as well as teachers.

Once the extended instructional design process is identified, the replication of similar products for other grade levels and geographic regions would be much easier.  For example, the technological difference between teaching about the local Bay Area of Texas and teaching about the plains of West Texas is primarily one of data.  Although the use of the toolbox with different regional data could produce significantly different outcomes, this is precisely the outcome that we might hope this learning environment would encourage.   The basic toolbox of GEOTEKS would be available to a wide range of teaching topics, including history, economics; government, citizenship, culture, science, technology and society, as well as other components of social studies, including social studies skills. The initial focus and the basis for this research is the geography subset of social studies.

The GEOTEKS toolbox could be used by a teacher with virtually any conceptual or theoretical perspective.  For mapping and geographic data analysis there are, in the marketplace, literally hundreds of geography oriented computer products (GIS World, 1997) that can be used to collect and encode, analyze, display, and print or plot geographic data.  In general, one can say that this technology, known generically as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), is a happy marriage of mostly relational database technologies and color display technologies, working together in tandem on a relatively simple personal computer platform.   The major drawback to using any of these off-the-shelf products in the learning environment at the target seventh grade level is that they are complex and require a number of skills to be able to use the products productively.

The concept for GEOTEKS is to provide a stimulating interface metaphor and learner scaffolding with a significantly less complex user interface, thereby reducing the learning curve and skill levels, while at the same time providing the student with a simulated authentic environment using the power of typical desktop GIS products.  By means of hierarchically structured, point and click graphical user interfaces, the students can rapidly create visual displays and maps that support exploration of a TEKS theme or a related learning strategy.

This paper does not take into consideration the issues that might be categorized under the umbrella of critical pedagogy.  No attempt was made to challenge the assumptions of the dominant curriculum or essentialism. (Spina, 1997). The intent was to assume the current TEKS and subsequently get input from students to compare with that of teachers.  While an attempt will be made to include students from urban as well as suburban schools, the issue of willingness to cooperate with the research is the most significant issue.  Taken beyond this paper, the Reflective, Recursive, Design and Development model implies ongoing inclusion of other concepts, other groups, other ideas into the product.  With this process, areas such as gender differences, socio-economic differences, racial differences, and cultural differences, while valid research questions in their own right, which are not a part of the current study, could be included in GEOTEKS.
 

Definition of Terms

• Behaviorism - A model of learning and design that is based upon the belief that knowledge is primarily passed from teacher to student in a relatively structured environment moving from the specific basis and building into the general.  Teachers and texts are seen as the source of knowledge while students are relatively passive receivers this knowledge.
• Constructivism - A model of learning and instructional design based upon several theories and theorists.  Basic ideas include the belief that knowledge is constructed from experience, that learning is a personal experience of reality, that learning is an active process situated in the real world.  Frequently these ideas are implemented in a collaborative learning environment where the teacher is a facilitator and team member rather than the source of knowledge.
• GIS - Geographic Information System(s), a computerized database system for capture, storage, retrieval, analysis, and display of spatial (geographic) data.
• GENIP - Geographic Education National Implementation Project.  A joint project of the American Geographical Association (AGA), the Association of American Geographers (AAG), the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE), and the National Geographic Society (NGS). Since its formation in July 1, 1985, GENIP has worked to coordinate efforts to improve the status and quality of geography education across the curriculum in grades K-12.
• ISD - Instructional Systems Design is an organized process for development of instruction.  Traditionally ISD has included phases of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.
• Learner-Centered (sometimes called student-centered) - The learning environment that emphasizes the needs of the learner as contrasted to those of the teacher.  Generally learner-centered is connected with the constructivist learning theories, whereas the teacher-centered learning environment is associated with the objectivist or behaviorist theories.  Guidelines for learner-centered proficiencies for teachers, administrators and counselors in the State of Texas are provided in a Texas Education Agency document (October, 1995).
• Multimedia - A computer system or software product that incorporates more than one of the following: text, sound, graphics (pictures), animation, or video.
• NCGE - National Council for Geographic Education.  The NCGE works to enhance the status and quality of geography teaching and learning by promoting the importance and value of geographic education; by the preparation of geographic educators with respect to their knowledge of content, techniques, and learning processes; by facilitating communication among teachers of geography; by encouraging and supporting research on geographic education; by developing, publishing, and promoting the use of curriculum, resource, and learning materials; and by cooperating with other organizations that have similar goals (NCGE, 1998).
• PDAS - Professional Development and Appraisal System, the newly released standards by which Texas teachers are evaluated.
• TAC - Texas Administrative Code.  In 1977, the Texas Legislature passed the Administrative code Act (Government Code, 2002.051 - 2002.056) which instructed the Office of the Secretary of State to compile, index and cause to be published the Texas Administrative Code.  Title 19 of the TAC includes all statewide education agencies,  including the Texas Higher Education Board, the Texas Education Agency, the Teachers' Professional Practices Commission, the Advisory council for Technical-Vocational Education in Texas, Foundation School Fund Budget Committee, and the State Board for Educator Certification.
• TAAS - Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, the basic criterion referenced testing instrument utilized in measuring learning achieved in K-12 Texas schools.
• TEKS - Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, the guidelines published by the Texas Education Agency providing essential knowledge and skills from K-12 in all areas of educational curriculum.

Methodology

Background

At each step along the journey, I  reflected upon my experiences and tried to discover the most successful strategies based on my most recent teaching.  With no theoretical background, it was mostly a trial-and-error experience, but I could still make adjustments and emphasize those things that appeared to work best in a particular learning environment.  Even with standardized curricula I was required to utilize while teaching with IBM, teaching the same one-week course two or three times a month.  Despite the constant repetition, I do not believe I ever taught the same class twice.  Teachers must look at each situation, use the many types of feedback from the learners, and then adjust the course to meet the student needs.

The most significant change that has occurred in my teaching focus in recent years was the realization that I was not the total resource for student learning experiences.  I cannot even identify the time when this change came to pass.  I simply know that while the questions from students often trigger a just-in-time mini-lecture, I constantly encourage the students to see themselves, as well as their classmates, along with tools, such as the computer and the Internet as their greatest resource,.  I am primarily a member of the learning team.  Thus, reflection and revision (or recursion in the Reflective, Recursive, Design and Development model) is one of my deeply held patterns, and is one of several that makes this model theoretically and personally appealing.

The author is adopting what would be considered a constructivist approach in this study.  This decision is based upon the study of theories advanced in the literature, as well as many years of practical, personal experience in the classroom with students.  The author firmly believes that in the ideal learning environment that the learning must somehow be situated or positioned in the real world.  I strongly believe that we learn more and more thoroughly when we learn together with others.  We gain from the insight of other persons in a collaborative environment.  I have also observed that learning is greater and more sustained when we are actively involved in the learning process.  Passive learning is transitory as witnessed by the number of items we passively absorb and then promptly forget.  It is my belief that learning is indeed constructed from the experience and background of each unique, individual learner is interpreted and understood from the perspective of that individual.  Evaluation or assessment should be based on the learner's ability to use the skills acquired rather than memorization of disconnected facts.

The purpose of GEOTEKS is to develop an integrated technology toolbox in support of the knowledge domain bounded by the TEKS as supported by the national geography and social studies standards.  GEOTEKS would include software, data, identification of tools, and models of the usage of the tools in a technology rich, student-centered learning environment, packaged in such a way as to be easily available and able to be used by the targeted 7th grade level.
 
 

Introduction to the Instructional Design Model

As part of a series of exchanges between Willis and Dick that appeared in Educational Technology (Dick, 1995; Willis, 1995) and Educational Technology Research and Development (Dick, 1996) Dick sees his ISD tasks as being contained within the three foci identified by Willis.  Dick observes that the exceptions to the traditional sequence are: the definition focus contains no statement of instructional objectives, and the dissemination focus contains no summative evaluation.

The Reflective, Recursive, Design and Development model structures around three focal points: definition, design and development, and dissemination.  For the definition focus, recursion and reflection are important aspects.  Also included are the traditional components of front-end analysis, the creation of a partnership among stakeholders for shared understanding, and a progressive solution of the problem.  The design and development focus includes preparation tasks and creation tasks, with recursive formative evaluations by users. The dissemination focus includes the traditional packaging and distribution, but without the requirement for a summative evaluation.
 

Methodology

To elicit the pre-development input from the primary stakeholders, focus group sessions are scheduled at the William R. Blocker Middle School in Texas City, Texas.  Other focus groups are planned with Friendswood Junior High School, Friendswood, Texas; the Alvin Middle School, Alvin, Texas; and the Clear Lake Intermediate School in the Houston area, and with a Middle School in Austin, Texas. Design and development of a pilot multimedia metaphor and skeleton diagrams will be available for the focus group sessions.

By the end of the pre-development focus groups, a reasonable amount of information will already be available which will permit drawing preliminary conclusions and begin writing the first drafts of the results and conclusions chapters.  This is to be followed by the second round, the post-development focus groups of students and teachers based upon the first round implementation of GEOTEKS.  Using the results of the post-development focus groups, the second implementation will be created. Were this to be a commercial product, the process would be recursed until the stakeholders were generally satisfied with the results.
 

Key Informant Interviews

Questions for this key informant interview (Maier, 1997) included the following:

1. Can you describe the education structure of Texas?  Where does the Texas Education Agency fit in?  The school district?  The principal?  Who is really in charge of the education system?
2. This summer the State Board of Education approved new Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, which will be implemented over the next year or so.  Can you give me some of the background about the TEKS?  Is there any connection between the TEKS and the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) in fact?
3. I understand you were involved in reviewing drafts of the TEKS.  What was the process like?  How do the TEKS relate to the National Geography Standards?  The History and Social Studies Standards?  In your opinion, how did the TEKS turn out?
4. Is there any enforcement mechanism for the TEKS?  What would happen if a teacher said "the heck with the standards, I'm going to teach the way I've always taught?"  How would a teacher go about "teaching to the TAAS" as it is called?
5. In asking school district administrative personnel about the purchase of academic software, they refer me to the local schools, citing "site-based-management."  Is site-based-management statewide, or is it a local decision?  In districts with site-based management, what have been your experience of the impact on the district, the local school, the principal, and the teacher.
6. Do you believe multimedia packages have a place in the classroom?  If you were to be a consultant to someone developing an academic multimedia package, would you have any recommendations?  What would you like to see included?  Excluded?
7. Anything else you would like to say?

The questions asked of the retired teacher are:

1. This past summer the State Board of Education approved new Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, which will be implemented over the next year or so.  Have you read the new TEKS?  What do you think of them.  In your opinion is there any connection between the TEKS and the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) in fact?  In your mind, how did the TEKS turn out?
2. In asking school district administrative personnel about the purchase of academic software, they refer me to the local schools, citing "site-based-management".  Is site-based-management statewide, or is it a local decision?  In districts with site-based management, what have been your experiences of the impact on the district, the local school, the principal, and the teacher.
3. You have had the opportunity to take some training in the ArcView Geographic Information System package.  Would you have been able to use the software in your classroom when you were an active teacher?  What were the main benefits of ArcView?  What drawbacks do you see in using the software?
4. Do you believe multimedia packages have a place in the classroom?  If you were to be a consultant to someone developing an academic multimedia package, would you have any recommendations?  What would you like to see included?  Excluded?  Would you see any benefit to having ArcView-like functions embedded in a multimedia package that provides scaffolding for the seventh grade student user?
5. Anything else you would like to say?

Focus Groups

Student Pre-Development Focus Group Questions

1. What worries you most about the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) test you will take in social studies this year?
2. What do you remember about what you studied in the 7th grade about Texas history?  Did you use a computer to study Texas history?
3. What was the most interesting thing you studied in Texas history?  Why?
4. What was the least interesting thing you studied in Texas history?  Why?
5. Did you have an opportunity to work with maps?
6. Do you know what multimedia is? (explain if not) What is the best thing about using a computer to study?
7. If you were designing multimedia tools on a CD-ROM to help you study Texas history in social studies, what tools would you like to see included? What do you like about using a computer to study?
8. What would you not put into your CD-ROM multimedia toolbox? What do you not like about using a computer to study?
9. If I told you I was creating such a toolbox, what other things would you like to tell me?

1. Have you had a chance to see or hear about the new Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS)?
2. My research is specific to the TEKS on social studies, especially geography.  What skills in social studies are most important to you? Why?
3. Do you think that using a computer to explain such things as map projections, create thematic maps, databases, business charts, etc. would be useful to your student?
4. Would you be interested in your student having access to CD-ROM or Web based multimedia tools to assist in the teaching of the geography portion of social studies?  Why or why not?
5. If you were designing a multimedia toolbox as we just discussed, what, in your opinion would be the most important types of items to include?
6. What types of items would be better taught without the use of computers or multimedia?
7. What other issues would you like to see considered in my research on using technology to support the social studies TEKS at the middle school level?

1. Have you had a chance to see or hear about the new Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) in social studies?
2. What skills of the new TEKS for social studies do you think will be most difficult to teach?  Why?
3. Do you think that using a computer to explain such things as map projections, create thematic maps, databases, business charts, etc. would be useful to your students?
4. Would you be interested in your students having access to CD-ROM or Web based multimedia tools to assist in the teaching of the geography portion of social studies?  Why or why not?
5. If you were designing a set of multimedia tools like we just discussed, what, in your opinion would be the most important type of items to include?
6. What types of items would be better taught without the use of computers or multimedia?
7. What other issues would you like to see considered in my research on using technology to support the social studies TEKS at the middle school level?

Student Post-Development Focus Group Questions

1. Have you had a chance to use the GEOTEKS multimedia software to assist your learning in seventh grade social studies?
2. What did you like about GEOTEKS?
3. Has GEOTEKS been useful for you in learning social studies?
4. What would you, as a student user, like to see added to the next version of GEOTEKS?
5. What would you, as a student user, like to see removed from the next version of GEOTEKS? 6. Are there any other ideas or suggestions you would like to make?

1. Have you had a chance to use the GEOTEKS multimedia software to assist students in seventh grade social studies?
2. What did you like about GEOTEKS?
3. Do you think GEOTEKS would be useful for students in learning social studies?
4. What would you, as a teacher, like to see added to the next version of GEOTEKS?
5. What would you, as a teacher, like to see removed from the next version of GEOTEKS?
6. Are there any other ideas or suggestions you would like to make?

Student Observation

Reflective, Recursive, Design and Development

As such, solutions, decisions and alternatives may appear at different points or progressively emerge throughout the project.  The reflexive part of the model helps the development team achieve greater insight into "both the context and the influence of your work on that context  (Willis, 1995, p.14)."  In other words,  the Reflective, Recursive, Design and Development model can be seen as a learning process in itself, as each of the participants learn together in an active, authentic, social, and collaborative way.

As part of the definition focus, the traditional systematic design or behavioral subtasks (front-end analysis, learner analysis, task analysis, concept analysis, and specifying instructional objectives)  are treated in a somewhat different fashion.  The multimedia team/author does not come in as the expert, who examines all the aspects of each of the subtasks and render an imperial opinion, but rather they become listeners who interact with the end users (learners), each other, and perhaps outside parties to reach the tentative definition focus.  With this study in particular, this phase involves a focus group of student, an unusual process in the development of educational software.  This process allows an ongoing formative evaluation as the team/author acquires additional information and shares it with the others involved.  This also requires that a multimedia team/author be involved in a collaborative dialog rather than taking on a defensive shield of ownership.  The direction of this focal point however, must be toward authentic educational instruction and assessment.  Behavioral or instructional objectives are not necessarily an outcome of this focus, at least initially.  The instructional objectives will come out over the course of the project, and even undergo several revisions as the depth of understanding and context mature.

The Willis design and development focus is more dependent upon the product and situation than other instructional design models.  Ideally, as decisions are made, they are still held to be tentative and subject to change as new information becomes available.  This can influence the selection of media, software, hardware and other project components, because some of them are more amenable to rapid change than others.

Willis makes an interesting comment (1995, p.19) when he says "An educational product is as much an artistic creation as it is a technical product."  While this de-emphasizes the technical in favor of the creative and artistic, a satisfactory product must be technically sound and function properly.

As mentioned previously, the evaluation process of a Reflective, Recursive, Design and Development project is primarily formative and ongoing.  Each iteration of the cycle causes an evaluation cycle.  For this research, it is proposed, however, that a summative evaluation be accomplished.  In true marketing terms, the best summative evaluation is the sales results of the product.  In the academic sense, the learning environment for the author would encourage a summative evaluation by an outside expert to support the validity of the project following the completion of the study as the dissemination focus is not part of this project.

This study will involve input from of individuals, each contributing to the overall development.  No single individual will have all the answers, although the author has the lead in terms of gathering, interpreting, documenting and publishing of the results.

By the conceptual nature behind the Reflective, Recursive, Design and Development instructional design model, this process begins with somewhat vague goals and objectives and they become more specific as the development team/author partnership creates the development product.  As a result the goals and objectives initially appear to be fuzzy and incomplete.

Design and Development

Some programming will be required in an object oriented language, such as Visual Basic, along with one of the desktop GIS packages, with ArcView 3, Map Objects, or ArcExplorer.  Environmental System Research Institute (Esri), vendor of the target products publishes an interface to Visual Basic.   Major issues of cost trade-off must be considered during the development process.  The general object categories for Map Objects are data access objects, address matching objects, map display objects, and geometric objects.  ArcView 3 is a full-function desktop GIS. ArcExplorer is a released freeware product that allows visualization and analysis of geographic data by means of the World Wide Web or local data.  The cost and general capabilities of this no-cost product is encouraging early in this study. Because of the initial cost, ArcExplorer is considered the primary among the potential candidates.  Hardware platforms and operating systems must also be considered in the early preparation tasks. Which products operate on which platform is a major consideration.  This again invites the consideration of multimedia development for a web browser.  ArcExplorer then stands out because it utilizes the cross-platform web as the delivery mechanism.

Primary creation tasks early in the process involve the selection of appropriate data for the project, including aerial photography available from the State of Texas.  The initial vision is one of an icon driven point and click environment, with the student choosing by means of the mouse, which areas of the content domain are of interest, and selecting from the available data structures the content most likely to be of use in the project.  It is intended that the projects be self-contained, so that navigational issues are kept to a minimum, and that both help screens and just-in-time tutorials or samples are made available. Use of a wizard like scaffolding appears promising to assist students in making useful choices.

The development of any of the components of GEOTEKS will depend upon the results of the previous cycle of recursion and reflection.  Different levels of component development will arise out of different choices that are made by the team/author.  For example, if the more expensive ArcView product were selected, the development effort is more of a simple definition of the themes required for each project, since ArcView 3 is a fully functional GIS.  On the other hand,  the less expensive Map Objects direction would require more extensive use of a development tool, such as Visual Basic, and would involve more actual programming effort. ArcExplorer would require less effort in programming, but would require more thorough preparation of data for student use.

Some things, such as visual design,  are primarily determined by the components that are included in the package.  Since GEOTEKS is a bringing together of technology components, the interface design is very much influenced by the GIS and authoring components, once they have been identified.  Sequence and other choices are primarily in the hands of the end user as this is a toolbox, not a single path environment. As each iteration of recursion and reflection occurs, the design will involve a new formative evaluation, and adjustment made in the development process based on the feedback of the participants. Again the choice of development products will influence these decisions as they have different levels of effort to support changes made as the result of formative evaluation. Both students and teachers will provide formative evaluations.  As a significant portion of the research is the inclusion of multiple stakeholders in the design, feedback sessions of the primary stakeholders will occur with each iteration.

As the product becomes stable and satisfactory to the team/author, an alpha version will be produced.  At this time the alpha version should be evaluated by one last set of persons who have not been involved with the development of the product.  As the results of recursion and reflection by the alpha evaluators are integrated, the beta version will be produced.

To some this may appear to be a very unstructured development environment, but the very nature of the Reflective, Recursive, Design and Development instructional design model asks that decisions be held until the latest possible time.  Even then previous decisions are subject to revision or change as part of the evaluative process.

Beginning Concept of Finished Project

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the concept would be to follow an example.  At the grade 5-8 level, for The World in Spatial Terms theme,  the national standards (p. 144) ask that the student know and understand:

1. The characteristics, functions, and applications of maps, globes, aerial and other photograph, satellite-produced images, and models.
2. How to make and use maps, globes, graphs, charts, models, and databases to analyze spatial distributions and patterns.
3. The relative advantages and disadvantages of using maps, globes, aerial and other photographs, satellite-produced images, and models to solve geographic problems.

Dissemination

REFERENCES

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