Chang, Chew Hung

For many years learning management systems have been focused on providing resources for students. More recently, the growth of digital repositories has provided resources that can be tagged and searched independently of a course structure. G-portal provides resources specifically tagged for geographical learning tasks and provides a project space in which students can collaborate, create resources and share these resources amongst themselves. This paper reviews the research issues surrounding G-portal using activity theory as a framework and defines a research agenda based on the capabilities of G-portal. In particular, issues of information organisation, issues of usability, search strategies and retrieval techniques, multimodality of representation, transduction of information and representation of geographic and spatial information will be examined. The research agenda focuses on three areas: information organisation and representation; the capabilities of the G-Portal application and its ability to integrate and retrieve information and geographical task; and the ease with which students are able to undertake and complete learning tasks about geographical phenomena.

We often assume that when we engage a student in a constructivist learning activity on the internet, the student will be more motivated, learn more effectively and attain higher-order learning outcomes. However, little empirical research exists to confirm these assumptions. The central research question of this study was to explore what happens when a student is engaged in constructivist learning in a small group using resources from the web. Within the framework of an activity system, this study investigated how the student (subject) interacted with the web (tools) in the learning process (production) to generate the observed learning outcomes (object). This involved the views of teachers as stakeholders (community) and the way the students worked in a group (division of labour). Concepts from existing studies such as Borgman et al. (1990) and Kuhlthau’s (1993) study of information-seeking behaviour were used to explore some of these elements in the activity system conceptual framework. In essence, a Creswell (1998) and Guba and Lincoln (1989) adaptation of the Wolcott (1983) conception of a quasi-ethnography was used as the qualitative methodology for this study. In general, the results indicated that the students may be more motivated by assessment marks than the use of the internet. Students also felt that searching for information on the internet was frustrating, especially when information was in non-summarised and non-extracted forms and thus preferred to simply receive information from the teacher. The information-seeking behaviours noted were largely in the starting and chaining categories in Ellis’ (1995) terminology. Although some higher-order learning outcomes such as attitude and evaluation were present, the students were proficient with simply reproducing facts. The students also felt that working in a group was difficult which possibly indicated a lack of experience with working in groups. Time constraint to meet was a reason cited by the students that has hampered their learning together. The teachers also felt that such an activity was limited in its effectiveness and rather impractical as curriculum time is limited. Amidst the rather unpromising results arising from using the internet in this learning activity, the findings do provide useful information on how future constructivist learning activities, such as the use of WebQuests (Dodge, 1997), can be designed.

Students learn Geographical concepts more effectively if they can identify and generalize about where different resources or activities are spatially located and when they associate certain patterns and processes with geographical changes. Digital libraries can be used to support web-based student-centred inquiry as a mode of learning Geography. This study explores the affordances of a geographical digital repository (the G-Portal) which organizes information around problem tasks. Two phases of the project were to build a digital library for Geographical assets and to develop a place-name assignment algorithm which automatically determines the names of places embedded in web pages referenced by these assets so as to augment them with the appropriate location semantics. This G-Portal digital library serves an active role in collaborative learning activities in which students conduct a virtual field study of an environmental problem, within a geospatial context – in this case, beach erosion and sea level rise. GPortal also provides manipulation and analytical tools that can operate on the information retrieved.

In balancing the role of assessment as an integral part of the curriculum and teaching process and that of a measurement and reporting tool, practitioners are often challenged to design good assessment tasks that fulfil these purposes as well as developing cognitive skills and abilities. While there are many research studies on inquiry in fieldwork and on assessment in geography education, there is little recognition on how the whole process of inquiry acts as a form of fieldwork assessment within geographical education. This chapter proposes that inquiry can be a mode of assessment for and as fieldwork and need not be solely administered at the end of fieldwork activities.

Information Technology is commonly referred to by its acronym IT. But just what does IT encompass and what are the "technologies" of IT that are useful for learning? How will IT enrich a lesson and enable learning? In particular, the question of how different the advent of new ITs such as the World Wide Web (WWW) is from existing ITs such as the video or TV will be examined. Since learning arises from a constructive process of reflection on the material provided and interaction with it, the mere use of IT in lessons may not be a sufficient condition for learning to occur. It may not even be a necessary condition for learning to occur. Furthermore, IT refers to an extremely varied spectrum of "technologies" ranging from plain electronic manifestation of printed material to self-contained, highly interactive, communication-enabled and multi-mediated materials. There exists a problem on the choice of IT for learning. Examples will be drawn from the comparative study of two University Geography courses, one pre-service and one in-service, on the infusion of interactive online web-based courses to enable learning.

This study identified secondary school students’ alternative conceptions (ACs) of climate change and their resistance to instruction. Using a case-based approach, a diagnostic test was administered to Secondary 3 male students in a pre-test and post-test. The ACs identified in the pre-test were on the causes of climate change, the natural greenhouse effect and its properties, the enhancement of the greenhouse effect, the elements involved in heat-trapping and their characteristics. There were also notable ACs on the effects of climate change, mostly on how the phenomenon is related to non-atmospheric events such as tsunami, earthquakes, acid rain and skin cancer. The students confuse the Montreal with the Kyoto Protocol as the primary treaty aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Whereas there was significant improvement in students’ understanding in the post-test, the distribution of responses for each of the ACs showed that the reduction in erroneous responses was not sufficient to reject the ACs fully. The authors recommend that instruction should move beyond patchwork pedagogy to a more explicit acknowledgement, incorporation and direct refutation of misconceived knowledge structures.