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Rationale Our combined department of Geology and Geography is using tablet PCs to facilitate mapping and field-data collection in a variety of classes. Our classes and research rely increasingly on GIS (geographic information systems, or computer-based mapping and spatial analysis), and we have frequent field trips that involve collection of data such as stream flow measurements, vegetation type, habitat characteristics, and GPS locations of sample sites. Our primary intent with the tablet PCs is to experiment with the ways that mobile technology can aid field work. We find that having a GIS perspective and a visual assessment of a field location helps students better understand the processes and patterns that shape those locations. In addition, students can maintain more focus in their projects because they are not forced to leave their work in the lab, but can carry their work home, to class, and to presentation situations. We are also discovering that other classes - from urban studies to environmental chemistry - are finding the tablets and the GIS software useful.
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Instructional Design Using Mobile Mapping Geography and geology courses frequently contain a field component. Our students are used to and expect to go on field trips, and often we ask them to map what they see. In addition, many of our classes include GIS mapping and exercises as part of the laboratory section. The natural extension of these two strong aspects of our department is to combine the field work with computer mapping which is what we have accomplished with mobile mapping. The curricular redesign that we have integrated is simply to take the students out to the field location, each with a tablet PC, and have them map their surroundings. On each of the tablet PCs are all the background data they might need (aerial photographs, soils, geology, census data, tax parcels, and the like). Implementing mobile mapping into the courses that we've done so far (see Quick Facts) has been quite smooth. This ease of implementation is largely due to the fact that the faculty members that have taught with mobile mapping each have an expert knowledge of the GIS software and use of the tablet PC. In the past, students would map on a paper map, collect data, write down some observations in a notebook, and go back to the computer lab to transcribe all of the information on a desktop computer. With the use of mobile mapping, we address three concerns that arise with the older process of paper and pencil mapping. First, mobile mapping eliminates a potential for error in that the student writes down the answer, or data point, or maps a line once and it is immediately entered onto the hard drive; there are no transcription errors. Second, a student having all of the basemap information right on the hard drive of the tablet PC can easily see while still in the field if there is an error in the placement of a location or a data point or a contact line between two geologic units. And finally, mobile mapping helps students visualize the landscape at multiple scales, and with multiple data layers, simultaneously. This is very powerful; visualization of phenomena that one cannot actually see, because of scale or invisibility, is key to understanding landscape processes.
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Mobile Mapping Technology Tablet PCs are essentially laptops that can be written on. The hard drive and processor are comparable to that of a desktop computer and all the traditional software programs that are used on standard computers or laptops can be used on a tablet PC. The big difference in the tablet PC is the pen and the screen. The pen-based technology acts as a mouse and becomes an extremely useful method of digitization when using the mapping software, ESRI's ArcMap. 'Digitizing' is the use of the GIS software and the tablet pen to draw such features as streams, faults, or polygons around stands of trees. A GPS receiver can be attached to the USB port to map in real-time, with the data stored in a GIS on the tablet's hard drive. Click here for step-by-step tips on using mobile mapping. Incidentally, some colleges (for example, Penn State University, Occidental College, and San Diego State University) are using PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant), such as iPaqs and Palms, for mobile mapping. We find that because the hard drive space is full-sized on a tablet PC, we prefer using a tablet to using a PDA. We can load up all the data we think the students might need and send them out confident that they will have all the basemaps at their finger tips. The screen, too, on the tablet PC is wider than on a PDA which makes navigation visualization easier. Perhaps most important, there is excellent continuity and efficiency when students can continue working on the same map projects and data files after returning from fieldwork. Because the tablets run all standard statistical and spreadsheet software, in addition to ArcGIS and GPS software, there is no need to transfer data when moving from field to office to classroom.
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Impact on Teaching In teaching, the tablet PCs have allowed us to bring GIS into classrooms across campus as well as on field trips in a variety of disciplines. This has greatly expanded our use of GIS in a range of disciplines and contexts. In addition, the tablets have increased flexibility in what we can ask students to do in class. Because Vassar's campus is now almost entirely wireless, we can pull up, for example, county planning reports or journal articles to examine while mapping, which increases our flexibility in teaching thus making it more interesting for both the faculty member and the students. We can take the discussion out of the classroom, into the departmental lounge, across campus, or to meetings and field trips off-campus.
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Impact on Student Learning Students show an increased awareness of the relationship between proximate and contextual factors in explaining environmental phenomena. On field trips, the ability to visualize surrounding conditions (such as, climate, census data, or historical variables) at multiple scales, while at a site, helps students to quickly understand the process of explaining phenomena geographically. In the classroom, the tablets allow us to project and discuss maps and data in ways that make the geography and geology accessible and intuitively clear to students and faculty from a variety of disciplines. A successful class will consist of students who are unaware of the use of technology integration.Our student's enthusiasm for mobile mapping provides compelling evidence for successful technology integration.Our course redesign and integration of mobile mapping has been effective because we see increased enthusiasm for projects, classes, and methods.And finally, comfort-level with the technology for the teaching faculty will only enhance the learning outcomes and experiences for our students. We anticipate hosting a week-long training session for faculty and support staff in the use of mobile mapping technologies in the future which will make technology integration and adoption go even more smoothly.
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An example of how mobile mapping at Vassar College has transformed field-based courses, Kirsten Menking takes her "Geomorphology: Surface Processes and Evolution of Landform" students out to a nearby creek to map its curvature. See and click on the photos below. Her students walk the stream course with GPS receivers attached to the tablet PC through a USB port to determine the present position of the stream. Then using the tablet pen, the students digitize the stream on a 1959 aerial photograph of the Vassar Farm. The students measure stream channel migration from 1959 to the present. Using GIS in the field allows students to work with the aerial photographs, to digitize features with ease and detail, and to examine features simultaneously on the ground and in the GIS, at the scale of both features and large areas. Menking feels this combination of scales is pedagogically powerful and offers much promise. Click here for the step-by-step procedures the students used for mapping the creek.
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Quick Facts While the tablet PCs were granted to the Department of Geology and Geography in 2004, they have been used in multiple departments across campus. Departments: Geology and Geography, Environmental Science, Urban Studies, Chemistry, Biology and Anthropology Courses Impacted:Landscape and Urban Planning, Ecology, Geomorphology, Field Archaeology, Conservation of Natural Resources, Essentials of Environmental Science, Introduction to Urban Studies, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), student thesis projects, and summer research programs--Exploring Transfer, Undergraduate Research Summer Institute Number of Students Impacted: about 175 Number of Faculty Involved: 11 This project is funded in part by a 2004 HP Technology for Teaching grant.
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Semester At-A-Glance Professor Lucy Johnson, Anthropology Professor, took the May 2005 Mobile Mapping workshop and then used a tablet PC and a GPS receiver in the summers of 2005 and 2006 to map an excavation site in Denning's Point in Beacon, New York, with students. This semester in Prof. Johnson's Field Archaeology class, students are using tablet PCs at the Mohonk Preserve to map locations of early prehistoric human remains. Early indicators from student's response to evaluation of the technology is positive.
Robert Fritz, Biology Professor, was shown mobile mapping technology and quickly decided to buy ten tablet PCs and GPS receivers. With the help of Biology Field Technician, Keri Van Kamp, Fritz has integrated mobile mapping into his Fall 2006 Ecology course. Students have been positively receptive to the technology. Over October Break, a tablet PC made its way down to New Orleans for Mary Ann Cunningham and Kirsten Menking's Environmental Science in the Field: New Orleans class. Loaded with geospatial data, students saw what the surrounding area looked like from above while driving around the flooded areas.
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We presented our work on implementing mobile mapping in classes at the recent American Association of Geographers meeting. To get a copy of the presentation materials, click the image.
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Faculty Workshops Mary Ann Cunningham, Kirsten Menking, and Meg Stewart held a faculty workshop on mobile mapping in May 2005. We had eight faculty members from the biology, chemistry, psychology, and anthropology departments participate. Over the summer of 2005 three of the faculty participants borrowed a tablet PC and a GPS receiver for research mapping.
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Other Mobile Mapping Projects Brian McAdoo, Geology Professor, used a tablet PC to map tsunami inundation, uplift and subsidence in Sumatra, Indonesia, immediately after the December 2004 tsunami hit southeast Asia. In addition, he and a student went to New Orleans to measure the maximum storm surge after Hurricane Katrina and used the tablet PC to map. "Having a very small, light and so far surprisingly rugged tool has been very helpful. The 'tablet' arrangement is nice, because using the GIS usually does not require a keyboard, so it is easy to whip out the tablet PC to show a satellite image along with a measurement on the spot." McAdoo is considering introducing tablet PCs in his Applied Geophysicscourse called Digital Underground. Kirsten Menking, Mary Ann Cunningham, Stuart Belli, Marshall Pregnall,and Pinar Batur (from Geology, Geography, Chemistry, Biology, and Sociology), began an environmental assessment of the Casperkill watershed over the summer of 2006. This multidisciplinary study involved at least 9 students and 5 faculty, in collaboration with faculty at Middlebury College and Furman University. Field-based mapping and assessment, as well as water quality monitoring, involved mobile mapping technology. The project is on-going. Catherine O'Reilly, Biology Professor at Bard College, took the Mobile Mapping workshop while she was a Visiting Professor at Vassar College. Subsequently, she used a tablet PC with students on a research project and told us, "I felt that using the tablets really engaged the students in the project. It also gave them some independence to find and use information, so that they could explore at will. I felt like having the aerial photographs to use in the field really gave the students a different perspective on the project they were doing and made them see how their work fit into the big picture." We would like to collaborate on a project of integrating mobile mapping into her Aquatic Ecology course at Bard. Meg Ronsheim, Biology Professor and Director of Environmental Studies, took the faculty Mobile Mapping workshop and immediately saw a connection for courses in biology. Together, we are pursuing a curricular redesign of Biology 106, where the students will each have a tablet PC for use in note-taking and mapping. Jonathan Rosenthal, PhD candidate in Biology, University of Michigan, is carrying out a tri-trophic biodiversity study (primary producers, herbivores, predators) involving mobile mapping of vegetation on the Vassar Farm. Keri Van Camp, with Bob Fritz and Mark Schlessman, is using a tablet PC in vegetation mapping for a garlic mustard study on the Vassar Farm.
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References & Publications Papers written and presentations given related to our mobile mapping project: Menking, Kirsten and Stewart, Meg, in review, Using Mobile Mapping to Determine Rates of Meander Migration in an Undergraduate Geomorphology Course, Journal of Geoscience Education. MS-06-032. Stewart, Meg, 2006, Notes & Ideas: Paperless, Wireless, Inkless Mapping: Academic Commons, September 25, 2006 Stewart, Meg, 2006, Vassar College Utilizing Mobile Data Collection and GIS: Geographic Information System Technology News: The Newsletter of the New York State GIS Coordination Program, Summer 2006 Cunningham, Mary Ann and Stewart, Meg, 2006, GIS Technology at a Small Liberal Arts College: The Importance of Administrative Support, Transformations, May 1, 2006. Stewart, Meg, Cunningham, Mary Ann, and Menking, Kirsten, 2006, Teaching environmental studies, urban studies, and geomorphology using tablet PC technology and GIS, Association of American Geographers National Meeting Program, Chicago, IL, p. 223. Menking, Kirsten and Cunningham, Mary Ann, 2005, Taking the Classroom Outside: Tablet PCs in the Field, Teaching with Technology Forum 2005 (Vassar College presentation). Helpful mobile mapping resources: Armstrong, M.P.and Bennett, D. A., 2005, A manifesto on mobile computing in geographic education, The Professional Geographer, v. 57, n. 4, p. 506-515. Clarke, K.C., 2004, Mobile mapping and geographic information systems, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, v. 31, p. 131-136. De Donatis, M., and Bruciatelli, L., 2006, MAP IT: The GIS software for field mapping with tablet PC,Computers & Geosciences, v. 32, n. 5, p. 673-680. Knoop, P.A., and van der Pluijm, B., 2004, Field-based information technology in geology education: Geopads, Eos Trans. American Geophysical Union, v. 85 (47). Manone, M.F., Umhoefer, P.J., and Hoisch, T.D., 2003, A digital field camp: Applying emerging technology to teach geologic field mapping, Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, v. 35, n. 6, p. 411. Neumann, K., and Kutis, M., 2006, Mobile GIS in geologic mapping exercises, Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 54, n. 2, p.153-157. Pundt, H., and Brinkkotter-Runde, K., 2000, Visualization of spatial data for field based GIS, Computers & Geosciences, v. 26, p. 51-56. Sleeter, B. M., Wood, M.J., and Halsing, D.L., 2006, Field Tools: An assessment of user needs and a development of tools for land cover change field work, Association of American Geographers National Meeting Program, p. 324. Web sites of interest: Vassar's GIS Blog University of Michigan, Interactivity in Large-Lecture Classess and Field Science Education Northern Arizona University, Tablet PCs in the Geosciences University of Alaska, Anchorage, Tablet PCs for Field-Based Courses
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