A Modular E-Learning Environment to Teach GIS to On-Campus and Distance Education Students1

NACTA Journal, Mar 2005 by Grunwald, S, Ramasundaram, V, Jesseman, D K

Survey

We conducted a survey to analyze various aspects of the course comparing the response of OC and DE students to the e-learning environment. In total 12 out of 16 DE students and 15 out of 18 OC students responded. The following questions were asked:

1. Were there any barriers to the success in the course? Possible answers provided to students: (a) Language skills; (b) Computer skills; (c) Learning disability; (d) Ability to manage time; (e) Others, (ranking 5: very high barrier, 4: high barrier, 3: medium barrier, 2: low barrier, 1: very low barrier).

2. Did you have any GIS knowledge prior to taking the course? Possible answers provided to students: (a) None; (b) Moderate; (c) Expert-knowledge.

3. Evaluate the increase of GIS knowledge at the end of the course. Possible answers provided to students included 5: very high, 4: high, 3: moderate, 2: low, 1: very low.

4. How useful were the following course materials for you: (a) PowerPoint slides; (b) Reading material (pdf format); (c) Additional resources (hyperlinks); (d) GIS assignments; (e) Online quizzes; (f) Support from TAs; (g) Self-reflective emails, (ranking 5: extremely useful, 4: very useful, 3: useful, 2: not very useful, 1: not useful at all)

5. How much time did you spend per week in the course? Possible answers provided to students: (a) 1-2 hours; (b) 2-5 hours; (c) 5-10 hours, (d) More than 10 hours.

6. How useful were the following interactive e-learning tools: (a) Event board which listed course announcements; (b) Message board which provided a framework for discussion between instructor, TAs and students; (c) Calendar which listed important class events; (d) Checklist which provided a list of tasks and assignments students needed to conduct in the course; (e) Online grade tool; (D Online evaluation tool; (D Histogram which provided information of individual performance in context of all other students; (g) Chatrooms which provided real-time communication between the instructor and students, (ranking 5: extremely useful, 4: very useful, 3: useful, 2: not very useful, 1: not useful at all).

Results and Discussion

Results are summarized in Figures 2 to 5. We used the Wilcoxon rank sum test to test if the two independent samples (OC and DE response) come from populations having the same distribution. For the Wilcoxon test, the test statistics is the sum of the ranks in the first sample, and the distribution of this statistics under the null hypothesis does not depend on the distribution of the two populations. The test assumes all of the observations come from the same distribution that is symmetric about the true population mean. (Millard and Neerchal, 2001). If the significance level is large, the hypothesis that the response from OC and DE students has the same distribution is not rejected. On-campus and DE students' responded different when asked about barriers to succeed in this course. While OC students felt that they have high computer literacy DE students found it more difficult to manage their time (Figure 2). OC students had to attend fixed classroom hours (4 hours a week) whereas DE students were only required to participate in a 1-hour chatrooms once a week.