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.