International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B6. Istanbul 2004
applied as additional information for lectures allowing
location and time independent strengthening and
intensification of knowledge. Students appreciated this offer
and still use the tutorial for brushing up their knowledge,
especially before examinations.
Meanwhile a newly designed teaching module is being
constructed, considering recent developments in eLearning
and software technology. The modules are designed by the
academic staff and students based on Open Source software.
They are maintained and updated unregularily, due to lack of
time and depending on student's motivation and commitment.
Cooperation with other authors in Germany has recently been
discussed and will play an important role in the near future.
2. OBJECTIVES
The central idea of the new approach was the aim to adapt
the training course to the learners' knowledge. This implied
developing independent but consistent small segmented
learning modules. Subjects were supposed to be parallelly
described in units of different levels of difficulty. The
content, for example may be splitted into 10 units for
students without pre knowledge, but only 4 for those who
don't need futher assistance. This modular conception allows
adaptive linking of the lessons, dependent on the learner's
knowledge. Individual learning tracks allow the students to
access only the material relevant to their needs.
This approach implies a specific course organization, user
and content administration, which is discussed in Chapter 4
in more detail.
Another just as important aspect is the definition and creation
of a centralized pool of questions, allowing learners'
assessment. Assessments/tests and surveys are the
presumption for an adaptive learning scenario. Test questions
are also assigned to different grades. Classification in easy
and difficult questions allow a more precise distinction of the
learners knowledge and a better guidance through the
training course. Of course, assessments need to be repeated
continuously allowing differenciated and self paced work.
Guiding learners through the course by formulating problems
and by skilled questioning should also be possible. The
modular approach will help to form an individual solution
track. At present, project oriented learning is still being
constructed.
Of course the usual demands for easy use, nice design, high
interactivity and using standards form a general objective
which the developers have to take care of.
The authors hope that the adaptive strategy will encourage
students and optimize their learning outcome.
3. CONTENT
Up to now the course covers several topics of Remote
Sensing. Chapters contain information about the physical
principles, analogue and digital data acquisition techniques,
sensor platforms (aerial photography, scanner and radar
systems) as well as information about how and where to
obtain Remote Sensing imagery. Special interest is focused
on online catalogues maintained by the different data
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suppliers. Data analysis methods, such as visual
interpretation, photogrammetric and digital image
processing, form another main focus of the tutorial. At least,
a brief overview of applications in several fields is given.
Each chapter is divided into different lessóns or sub-chapters,
which are again divided into several pages illustrating the
logical context, forming a hierarchical tree structure (see
Figure 1).
| main chapter (ID=1;chapter_ID=0) |
page (ID=1;chapter_ID=1)
page (ID-2.chapter ID-1)
chapter (ID=2;chapter_ID=1)
—[ehapter (IDz3;chapter IDz1)
chapter (ID-4;chapter. 1D-3)
page (ID=4;chapter_ID=4
chapter (ID=5;chapter_ID=3)
page (ID=5;chapter_ID=5)
page (ID=3;chapter_ID=2)
page (ID=6;chapter_ID=5)
| main chapter (ID=7;chapter_ID=0)
Figure 1. Chapter construction tree
4. REALIZATION
4.1 Preliminary reflections
Implementation of the learning program had to follow budget
constraints. Commercial learning systems are not available.
To keep costs short, LAMP (Linux in conjunction with,
Apache, MySQL and PHP) is the platform of choice for the
development of and the deployment during the course. It is a
solid and reliable platform, for robust web applications.
First reflections concern user administration. Controlled
access to the learning unit is prerequisite. This requires the
use of a database, in which all activities of users are stored.
In tables related to the learner time of access is recorded as
well as information about modules already handled and how
much time was needed for work. Also test results are stored
in the database. Information about the users' knowledge is
preconditionary for an individual course of the learning
program.
Also test questions need to be administered by a database,
ranked by its level of difficulty. Setting up a question tool is
one of the main topics of the learning system. At present
mainly multiple choice questions are implemented. If
numeric calculations are demanded, textfield input is
necessary. Clozes and project oriented tasks are under
development.
To satisfy database needs, MySQL as a relational Open
Source database was chosen. MySQL is popular in a variety
of operating systems and runs in stable conditions.