Development of a Course Material Package and Marketing Strategy
for the Geospatial Data Community
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Proposal submitted Sept 1998 |
Links to existing metadata materials |
Meeting Agenda and Attendees |
Meeting Results |
Education strategies and materials |
The purpose of this project, sponsored by the Federal Geographic Data Committee and the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science is to:
Another result of the meeting was a list of
desired products or efforts that the three different working groups
felt were important. Participants were asked to rank these products in
categories of high, medium, and low priority. All thhree groups identified
marketing to promote metadata as highest priority, as well as re-writing
the FGDC's content standards workbook, the "Green Book" into a web-based,
annotated version with more "plain English" terminology, examples, and
answers to frequently asked questions.
The Univeristy group
ranked the development of exercises incorporating metadata aspects as a high
priority, along with several example course outlines indicating which topics in
GIS classes are appropriate for referencing metadata.
The Workshop group identified these priorities: developing metadata training
materials appropriate for agendas of varying length: 10 minutes, 1 hour,
half day, one day, etc and the development of a web-based site for making
different training materials available.
The Self-paced/Distance Learning group recommended this active-learning
strategy: the development
of a scavenger/treasure hunt and/or murder mystery novel exercise that
weaves in metadata concepts in a interactive, game-like exercise.
The time frame of this project required choosing only one or two of the
working groups' recommendations for implementation. While all three
educational environments are important, the focus of this project, being
sponspored by the UCGIS, is on the university environment. Accordingly,
a metadata education strategy and accompanying materials were developed
according to the University working group's recommendations,
synthesizing information from existing teaching materials
and feedback from meeting participants. Though the
results are geared specifically toward metadata education in university
courses such as "Geographic Information / Spatial Concepts", "Introduction
to GIS", "Advanced GIS: applications and issues" and "Advanced GIS: software-
specific", we feel that the results are still applicable in other educational
settings including technical colleges, professional development courses,
workshops, and self-paced learning. The results of this project will be
published in Geo Info Systems (a GIS trade magazine with a section
specific to academic concerns) in spring, 2000.
In order to accomplish these goals, a meeting was organized to bring
GIS education and metadata experts together to discuss
educational and content issues
specific to the development of educational material for
metadata. The meeting was held on June 3-5 in Herndon VA with 25 participants from universities
and organizations around the country involved in GIS and metadata education.
The overall goal identified by the meeting participants was
to infuse metadata education through all stages of professional development,
in order to make metadata creation and use part of standard business,
education, and research practice. Several obstacles to this goal were identified
as well as strategies to better integrate metadata within GIS training and
increase awareness of these methods. The results of the meeting are summarized by three different
working groups: participants interested in traditional univeristy curriculum,
short course/workshop training; and self-paced or distance learning programs.
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UCGIS contacts (University of Wyoming) |
Jeff Hamerlinck itasca@uwyo.edu 307-766-2736 |
Margo Berendsen meh@uwyo.edu 307-766-2751 |
| FGDC contacts: | Rick Pearsall rpearsall@usgs.gov 703-648-4532 |
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