International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial-Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B6. Istanbul 2004 
the work market's areas. On this module is included 
the discipline Methodology on Scientific Research to 
fulfill the requirement of the National Council for 
Education for post graduation courses (lato sensu and 
strictu sensu). 
e Pilot Project: Its objective is to undergo the concepts, 
methods, techniques and procedures learned during 
the theoretical courses to a real situation. Its target is 
to carry out the knowledge and skills acquired during 
the course approaching subjects related to the student 
training area under advisor supervision. 
A table of the disciplines for each course module can be found 
at the following website: 
www.inpe.br/unidades/cep/atividadescep/cursointernacional 
Since its beginning in 1985, a regular assessment has been made 
every five years, and a new one was done in 2003. 
Before doing the assessment all the former students were 
contacted and asked to update their personal and professional 
data. This information would be useful to update the Course 
database and keep a regular contact with them as well as 
delivering the questionnaires for this assessment. 
The main objective of this paper is to present an assessment of 
the sixteen years of the International Course on Remote Sensing 
and Geographic Information Systems’ experience for that it can 
be set new goals and policies that will certainly improve its 
quality. 
2. METHODS 
In order to assess this course, this work was divided into two 
main phases: 
1) The updating of the course database: This task consisted 
of updating all former students’ data of the course database. 
The objective of the updating of this database is to maintain 
more regular contacts with them in order to know their 
academic and professional progression as well as evaluating the 
impact of this course in their career along these years. 
Since 2002 a hundred fifty nine forms were sent to them 
through emails, faxes and mail in order to know their new jobs, 
personal and professional addresses and other academic 
information that was missed in the course database. As this 
work is a continuous task, up to now eighty-four forms have 
already been received. 
2) The elaboration and delivery of questionnaires: This task 
consisted of the delivery of 159 questionnaires for all the 
students who took part in this course from 1985 to 2003, 
through emails, faxes and mails. From the total, 64 
questionnaires were received and make this assessment 
possible. 
The information requested in this questionnaire include the 
main topics as described below, besides the name of the former 
student, year of the course conclusion, country, gender, age, 
course graduation, mastering and doctorate courses (area and 
institution): 
° If they presently work | with 
Remote Sensing and GIS (work period, area and 
activity). If not, the reason they stopped to work with 
this technology; 
e [f their work institutions are public or private, their 
names and their positions; 
e If they had Master or/and Doctor Degree prior to 
participate in the International Course on Remote 
Sensing and GIS. If not, they arc currently 
participating in some post graduation program 
(Master or Doctorate, area and institution); 
eo If the International Course on Remote Sensing and 
GIS has been important on their academic and 
professional career and the main reasons; 
e If they teach or have already taught classes on remote 
sensing (name of the institution and if it is in 
graduation and/or post graduation courses); 
e If they have publications in this area and the number 
of them; 
e Finally, it was asked their opinion about the course, 
teachers, infrastructure and equipments, and the 
importance of this course to their professional career. 
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 
The primary results that were gotten through the updating of the 
Course database show a general view of the present state of this 
course in the last sixteen years and can be seen in the following 
tables (1 to 5): 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
190 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Area Number 
Administration 2 
Computer Science 8 
Architecture 9 
Biology 10 
Engineering (Aerial Photo Geodesic, Agricultural, SS 
Cartographic, Civil, Electric, Electronics, 
Environmental, Forest, Geological, Geodesy, 
Geographical, Geophysics, Software, Surveying.) 
Physics, Photogrammetry 6 
Geography 43 
Geology 2l 
Oceanography 2 
Zoology, Military, Statistics 3 
Total 159 
Table 1. The former students’ graduation area 
Country Number 
Algeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal. | 
Argentina 13 
Bolivia, Ethiopia, Chile 4 
Brazil 49 
Colombia 10 
Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay 2 
Cuba 10 
Ecuador, Venezuela 7 
Mexico 8 
Nigeria, Dominican Republic, Uruguay 3 
Peru 17 
Kenya 5 
Total 159 
  
  
  
  
Table 2. The country of the former students.