Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
2003
Department
Marine Science
Abstract
The continuing explosion in communications technologies has impacted the way that formal education can be delivered to students seeking it. One element is the decreasing requirement for students to physically attend classes, exemplified perhaps by university courses delivered using television broadcasts, with the same material being available on videotape. When used their full capability, these technologies lead to more than delivery of the lecturer’s words; they can include video clips and images that richen and broaden the learning experience. Most useful for courses designed to expound and transfer information, they do not meet the needs of participation and interaction traditionally met through the laboratory work required to properly teach some subjects. This role is being increasingly filled through the inclusion of interactive problem sets on CD in some textbooks, and through the development of open-access learning methods using the Internet. Happily, the many and varied advantages of the Internet as a teaching medium are being explored and expanded daily. Unhappily, it has one limitation that decreases its potential use in hydrographic education, in that the student needs to be connected to the Internet somehow. For most hydrographers on survey assignments, this is impossible or prohibitively expensive.
What is required to enable hydrographers to benefit from interactive learning is a suite of course material that has most of the benefits of an on-line course without the need for connectivity. This material would have to be self-contained, comprehensive, and capable of allowing exploration and giving feedback with little outside intervention. These are much more stringent requirements than providing a course on line with access to a vast array of links to backup resources.
Because of the clear need for hydrographers to continue their life-long learning, the Hydrographic Education in North America group (HENA) undertook development of the first self-contained hydrography learning module, “Horizontal and Vertical Datums, and Their Transformations”. Doing so meant expanding the skill sets available to the group, since although we had a surfeit of subject-matter knowledge, the need to portray this dynamically and interactively required adding specialists in distance education to the team. We also acquired partners primarily interested in becoming or supporting students but that are keenly motivated to support the project e.g., through input into the design.
Recommended Citation
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