MODERNIZATION OF THE CURRICULAR STRUCTURE
IN THE CARTOGRAPHIC ENGINEER FORMATION
by
JOSE CARLOS PENNA DE VASCONCELLOS
MAURO PEREIRA DE MELLO
from
RIO DE JANEIRO STATE UNIVERSITY
Engineering Institute
Department of Cartographic Engineering
Rua Sáo Francisco Xavier, 524 - 4? andar - sala 4020-B
(20550-013) Maracaná
Rio de Janeiro, RJ - BRASIL
KEY WORDS: Cartography, Engineering, Education, Learning, Teaching.
ABSTRACT
The tecnological evolution carry to a permanent thinking in the Engineer academic formation. Attitude that
has been conditioned by deep changes at last years, not only by the way of seeing the human rates with the
middle where he inserts himself, but mainly in making things. The dynamics of the interventions in
processes and production systems appoint the need of adapt the academic formation to the advancements
of sciences and tecniques that characterize the making of Engineering, at short intervals of time. In the field
of Cartography, the evolution of quantitative methods of multithematic investigation, associated to the
advancements of Computation Science and at the evolution of microinformatic, appoint to necessary
revisions in the curricular structure and in the program contents of the disciplines that characterize it. This is
the direction of the conjunct of adaptations carried out by the Department of Cartographic Engineering, of
the Engineering Institute of the Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil, combined with the decrease of hour-
load in expositive obligations and the corresponding increase of laboratories resorts. In the situation analisys
that guided the revisional processes, in a first step, the identification and the explanations for the
superpositions and divergences of topics and themes that could be considered unmodernized were
searched, to, in a second step, redesign the programs and the alignment of the blocks of disciplines for
scholastic periods, submiting them to an adapted specification of pre-requisites and co-requisites. Topics
very specificals, that only "swell" the program contents, when not the curricular structure, were eliminated
or, when sufficiently justifiables, grouped in optative disciplines. The result of this “reengineering”, to use a
"fashion" word, is summarized in getting a curriculum light and modern, that certainly will be provide to the
pupils an undergraduation compatible with the professional market requirements, considering vocations for
research and scientific-technological development too.
1. INTRODUCTION
The formation of Cartographic Engineers, by the Rio
de Janeiro State University, begun in 1965 like a
pioneer, has carried out systematic revisions of
curricular contents, searching a permanent
adequateness to the conditions of working market
and to the assimilation of the advancements of
science and cartographic tecnology that, at the last
thirty years, past by intense modifications, and we
dare to say, by a revolution, that affected not only
the “making”, but mainly the conception of
cartography and its value in the planning of
manners of intervention on the geographic space
and on the organization in territorial space,
consequently.
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Indeed, the advancements of eletronics, particularly
that one of micro-electronics, the consolidation of
statistical methods of multithematic investigation
and the evolution of Computation Science favoured
the accelerated evolution of Cartography. About
these premises, we must debate the formation of
the Cartographic Engineer, taken into consideration
the binomial teaching-research, that guides our
academic formation.
In the development of the revisional process of the
present curricular structure, in a first step, the
identification and the explanations for the
superpositions and divergences of topics and
themes that could be considered unmodernized
were searched, to, in a second step, redesign the
programmes and the alignement of the blocks of
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B6. Vienna 1996
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