Subject Area GIS

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Learning Apart Together (LAT)

This report gives an overview of the Euroleague
project “ Learning Apart Together “.

Besides the revised project proposal, the results of the student project, the first learning apart together case, and some remarks and lessons learned about the use of Video Conferencing and Webcams are offered by this report.

The student project focuses on a development of a landscape classification based on geometrical parameters like size, length and shape of landscape objects and open spaces. The results have been compared for the Dutch Topographical 1: 10000 datasets (TOP10 VEC) and the German topographical datasets 1:25000 (ATKIS).

However the results of the students project are really of interest in this abstract some concluding remarks about the use of webcams and Video Conferencing tools concerning the didactic interest.

The students came up with the following evaluation. They did meet difficulties to start up the project due to technical problems. For this reason the students did not reach a sufficient level of contact during the first one and half weeks. During this period, contacts were mainly made through emails, and then followed by a phone call.

The first online discussion was made through audio and webcam in the second week. Since then, the cooperation has become more efficient. There had been 3 to 5 regular contacts each week. Other than emails, other communication techniques were also applied, i.e. quickplace (project site for publishing discussions, results, plans etc.), net meeting (white board, share of software programs), MSN (webcam, voice chat). Exchange of ideas became much easier through these different contact means.

The best cooperation was realized during the discussion of the definition of space-forming objects. Due to different levels of GIS knowledge and software condition, there were some difficulties in applying the methodology, but both teams cooperated well in reaching a common agreement. During the data processing session, there were not only cooperation between the teams, but also between the supervisors and students. In time of need, the technical staff did good cooperation in solving the technical problems. The students summarize that the overall cooperation was at a good level.

Keywords: video conferencing, on-line collaboration, web based communication, application sharing, didactics, landscape analysis, GIS.