Digital Libraries in Support of Innovative Approaches to Learning and Teaching in Geography

Date:

2003-2008

Themes:

ELearning, Platforms and Tools, Digital Libraries, Learning Technologies

Funding:

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.

Primary investigators

• Hugh Davis
• Professor Grainne Conole
• Mike Freeston

Secondary investigators

• cpb
• kf
• Professor Dave Martin
• Dr Sally Priest
• Mr Samuel Leung

Partners

• School of Geography (Southampton)
• Research and Graduate School of Education
• University of California Santa Barbara
• University of Leeds
• Pensylvania State University

Associated research group

• Learning Societies Lab