NSF, JISC International Digital Libraries Research Programme
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)
and the United Kingdom Joint Information System Committee (JISC)
have jointly funded the DialogPlus project as part of their Digital
Libraries in the Classroom initiative. The project combines the efforts
of geographers, education specialists, and computer scientists at Pennsylvania
State University and the University
of California, Santa Barbara (U.S.) and the University
of Southampton and the University
of Leeds (U.K.) to develop and deploy reusable digital learning nuggets
through the Alexandria Digital Library.
Goals
Two primary goals of DialogPlus are:
to develop a distributed information infrastructure that
supports the teaching and learning of Geography;
to establish innovative approaches to teaching and learning,
based on this infrastructure.
Specifically, we want to:
show how undergraduate and postgraduate Geography programs
in the consortium universities can be enriched and developed through cross-national
collaboration and on-line delivery;
demonstrate how major geospatial resources concerning the
environment and human population can be used in study programs;
show how important skills in the analysis of spatial information
through the use of Geographical Information Science and Earth Observation
software and functions can be taught on-line in undergraduate programs;
develop on-line learning and teaching resources to use on
campus so geography courses can be delivered to students in other disciplines,
overcoming scheduling problems.