Designing a Structured and Interactive Learning Environment Basedon GIS for Secondary Geography Education

Suxia Liu and Xuan Zhu

ABSTRACTGeographic information systems (GIS)are computer-based tools for geographicdata analysis and spatial visualization.They have become one of the informationand communications technologies foreducation at all levels. This articlereviews the current status of GISin schools, analyzes the requirementsof a GIS-based learning environmentfrom constructivist perspectives, anddiscusses the major issues in the designof a constructivist GIS-based learningenvironment based on experience fromthe development of World Explorer,a GIS-based learning environment thatprovides a theme-oriented data andinformation base, supports multiplerepresentations and multiple linkages ofinformation, and facilitates interactivelearning and knowledge construction.

Key Words: GIS, geographic data analysis,spatial visualization, constructivism,secondary geography education

Suxia Liu is an associate professor at theSchool of Information Science and Technol-ogy, East China Normal University, Shang-hai, China. She obtained a Ph.D. degree ingeographic information systems (GIS) fromNanyang Technological University, Singa-pore. Her major research interests are GIS andits applications in transport, urban planning,and education.

Xuan Zhu is a senior lecturer at the Schoolof Geography & Environmental Science,Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria,Australia. Before joining Monash Universityhe worked in the National Institute of Educa-tion, Singapore. He obtained a Ph.D. degree inGiS from Edinburgh University, UK, and hasmore than ten years of research experience inGIS and several years of teaching experiencein GIS education for school trainee teachers.

INTRODUCTIONGeographic information systems (GIS) are one of the most recent information

and communications technologies (ICT) for education. A GIS is a computersystem designed to collect, store, manage, retrieve, manipulate, analyze, andvisualize geographic or spatial data. It provides a new teaching and learningtool for teachers to conduct problem-solving activities in the classroom and forstudents to explore geographic issues and enhance their spatial cognition andgeographic learning. The teaching and learning activities that can be supportedby GIS include:

"* collecting, storing, exploring, and using geographic data;"* exploring, developing, and presenting geographic concepts;"* making, using, and interpreting maps; and"* investigating geographic issues and solving problems.

Since the early 1990s there has been a considerable amount of effort expendedon the development of GIS resources to support these activities. However, theseefforts have been largely focused on the development of GIS datasets andlesson plans for specific topics selected from a particular school curriculum.Although the potentials of GIS for education have been widely recognized,the take-up rate is still low. The challenges to the use of GIS arise from thefact that school teachers and students are using the same complex GIS toolthat science, business, and industry use. Few studies have been done so far onhow to provide an appropriate learning environment based on GIS in whichlearners have opportunities to interact with geographic information, structuretheir own learning approach, pursue cross-reference about subject matters, andcreate and interpret multiple representations of geographic information. Thisresearch aims to fill this gap. In this article, we first review the current statusof GIS in school geography education, then analyze the requirements of a GIS-based learning environment from the perspectives of constructivism, and finallydiscuss the major issues in the design of a constructivist GIS-based learningenvironment based on our experience obtained from the development of WorldExplorer, a GIS-based learning environment for Singapore secondary geographyeducation.

GIS IN SCHOOL GEOGRAPHY EDUCATIONThe first publication on GIS and school education was probably by Robert

Tinker (1992). He explored the possibilities of representing data with digital mapsin many curricula and noted that a GIS may provide an important link betweenthe personal level of field observation and global effects and concerns. Since then,many studies on GIS and'school education have been conducted, and all suggestthat GIS can help teachers engage students in studies that promote critical thinkingand integrated learning at any grade level (Audet and Abegg 1996; Keiper 1999;Bednarz and Audet 1999).

A lot of efforts have been made so far by instructional designers, educators,and the GIS community at large to develop classroom-ready GIS resourcepackages including GIS software, data, and instructional materials to meet theteaching and learning needs. However, not many GIS software packages havebeen specially designed for school education. The earliest one is AEGIS (AUME1990). It is not a fully functional GIS package, but provides mapping and some

Journal of Geography 107: 12-19©2008 National Council for Geographic Education 12

database capabilities with sample data files and maps andmaterials designed to support the UK National Curriculumin Key Stages 2, 3, and 4. The majority of existingGIS resources have been developed through the use ofcommercialized professional GIS software packages, suchas ArcView, IDRISI, and SPANS. Development efforts havebeen largely placed on providing data and instructionalmaterials that are to be used with a particular GIS softwarepackage and support a particular geography syllabus. TheNational Center for Geographic Information and Analysis(NCGIA) has been engaged in creating GIS resources forK-12 schools in America since the early 1990s (Palladinoand Zuyle 1996). Major GIS software vendors, such as ESRIand IDRISI, have also built up strong links with schoolsby providing schools with GIS resources for teaching.ESRI's efforts to link with schools are very successful.Its ArcView product has become the most popular GISplatform in almost all Singapore schools that are using orplan to use GIS in their teaching and learning activities.The GIS data resources and instructional materials areusually made available on CD-ROM (such as ESRI's GISfor Schools and Libraries and the Ordnance Survey ofNorthern Ireland's Geographic Information Systems forSchools), or downloadable from the Internet (such as ESRI'sGIS for K-12 Education at http://www.esri.comi/industrieslk-12/index.html). There are also several excellent books of GISlessons (including lesson plans, data, and other resources),such as Mapping Our World: GIS Lessons for Educators(Malone et al. 2002) and Cominunity Geography: GIS in Action(Malone et al. 2003).

In Singapore, GIS was first introduced to primary,secondary schools, and junior colleges in 1998 when ateaching package for use with ArcView called EduGIS wasdeveloped jointly by the National Institute of Education(NIE) and the Ministry of Education (MOE). EduGISconsists of a series of practical lessons with GIS data setsfor geography studies, accompanied by teacher's guidesand student activity worksheets. In 1999 some schoolsstarted to use EduGIS with relevant data sets for thecore geography syllabus at the secondary level. In 2000EduGIS was revised based on teachers' feedback and twoadditional volumes were developed. In the same year, aninterdisciplinary project work module using ArcView wasintroduced. EduGIS played an important role in promotingthe awareness of GIS education in Singapore schools. Inaddition to this GIS teaching resource package, NIE andMOE developed a set of satellite images in 2001, entitled"Learning Geography from Space," to be used with Ar-cView and its relevant extensions, which aimed to encour-age junior college teachers to use an exploratory approachto teach selected urban and physical geography topics. In2002 MOE launched an interdisciplinary fieldwork projecton the "Mesocyclops as a Biological Control Agent Project,"involving students and both science and geography teach-ers from twenty schools in using GIS, GPS, and dataloggers.Over the past several years, NIE and MOE have alsoconducted extensive training courses and workshops to

A GIS-Based Learning Enmironment

help teachers develop their own lesson activities usingGIS. Some school teachers have actively used GIS as a toolfor inquiry-based learning and for interdisciplinary projectwork.

Despite these successes, only a small number of schoolshave consistent curriculum related programs that integrateGIS into geographic teaching and learning. According toour survey of 323 geography teachers from 106 Singaporesecondary schools conducted during the period of Aprilto June 2003, two-thirds of them were aware of GIS orlearned its use, but only ten percent actually adopted GISin their teaching (Yap et al. forthcoming). Recent experiencein Singapore suggests that, however good the quality,creation of data and instructional materials alone does notguarantee successful uptake and use of such resources byteachers in schools. Many factors may limit the uptake. Oursurvey in Singapore suggests that among the top reasonswhy teachers do not use these resources are insufficientcurriculum time, the perceived irrelevance of the materials(including data and instructional materials) to meetinglearning objectives, and the complexity of GIS software. GISsoftware like ArcView is a powerful tool for geographic datamanagement, spatial analysis, and visualization. However,such software tools are designed mainly for GIS analysts,scientists, and other professional users. Even a prol essionalrequires many hours of training and practice in order touse them effectively. In a focus group discussion on theuse of GIS in Singapore schools organized by NIE, onegeography teacher commentated that "ArcView's screeninterface could be quite intimidating even though t.'iere wasflexibility for the user to customize and remove unnecessarybuttons." A quick analysis of the teachers' comments in thefocus group discussion reveals that

1. GIS software lacks flexibility and user-friendlinessand is difficult for both teachers and students touse;

2. data in the existing resource packages are limitedin scope; and

3. lessons are isolated units without links to otheraspects of the topics.

In order to make GIS a practical, useful, and effectivetool for school education, there is a need to explore newapproaches for transforming a GIS into a learning envi-ronment that overcomes the limitations with the currentGIS teaching and learning resources discussed above, andthat supports interactive learning, knowledge construction,interdisciplinary learning, multiple representations, andmultiple linkages of information.

GIS AND LEARNINGThe use of GIS can change the way students gather

and analyze geographic information. However, existingGIS resource packages focus on projects that requirelearners to follow instructional sequences to learn par-ticular geographic content skills. School education has

13

Suxia Liu and Xuan Zhu

been progressing gradually towards a model of instructionthat emphasizes hands-on and inquiry-based learningexperiences in the classroom. As a method of instruction,geographic inquiry draws on a learning theory referredto as constructivism. Constructivism emphasizes problem-solving and inquiry-based learning rather than instruc-tional sequences for learning of certain content skills.In constructivist learning, the responsibility of teachersis to arrange for required resources and act as a guideto students, who are responsible for formulating theirown goals and research questions, gathering relevant dataand information, analyzing the data and information, anddrawing conclusions, thus teaching themselves (Hassard1992; Roblyer 2004).

The theory of constructivism is one of the major con-ceptual frameworks that have been used to guide contem-porary educational practices (Wilson 1996). It has two mainstrands: cognitive constructivism and social constructivism.Cognitive constructivism focuses on thinking skills andlearning strategies and ascribes the primacy to the role ofthe individual in learning (Martin and Sugarman 1997).According to the cognitive constructivist's point of view,learners construct their own knowledge of the worldthrough assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is aprocess of incorporating new experiences into existing ones,while accommodation is to modify and adapt existing cog-nitive structures in response to one's personal environment.Social constructivism puts emphasis on the learner's abilityto solve real-world problems and construct knowledgethrough social processes and interaction (Gasper 1999).The constructivist learning environment should providelearners with opportunities to negotiate ideas, conductinquiry, and reflect their thoughts so that they are engagedin meaningful learning and high-order thinking (Wen etal. 2004). Such a learning environment should have thefollowing characteristics (Jonassen et al. 1993; Jonassen 1994;Maddux et al. 1997):

"* present multiple representations of the world;"* offer real-life problem-solving tasks in a social

context;"* support context-dependent and content-dependent

knowledge construction;"* enable collaborative knowledge construction;"* engage reflective practice; and"* provide open learning environments.

A GIS is a toolkit for geographic data analysis, explo-ration, and visualization. GIS technology is not developedfor educational applications by the constructivist approach,but it provides useful tools for constructing a computer-based constructivist learning environment for geographyeducation. These tools can support geographic inquiryby allowing learners to formulate geographic questionsor hypotheses, access and obtain geographic data frommultiple sources, present geographic data and information

in forms of maps, images, tables, and charts, explore thedata through carefully constructed queries, and analyzethe data to answer the questions or draw conclusions.A GIS-based learning environment can be developedthrough careful design to match learners learning processes.In addition to accommodating the basic features of aconstructivist learning environment as discussed above, aGIS-based learning environment should allow for multipledimensional navigation through a body of spatial data andinformation and support interactive learning. It should alsoallow learners to be actively involved, have full control overthe learning situation, control the interaction between usersand computers, and perform problem solving tasks throughcritical thinking.

According to Bruner (1966), there are three differentmodes of representation of the real world: enactive, iconic,and symbolic. An enactive representation is the form ofrepresentation through action, including enactment anddemonstration. Iconic representations include visual andother summarizing images and pictures. Symbolic repre-sentations include words and numbers. Any geographicidea or problem or body of geographic knowledge can bepresented in a form simple enough so that any particularlearner can understand it in recognizable form. Each modeof representation supports different aspects of geographicthinking. However, different representations use differentforms of knowledge, each of which has advantages and hid-den difficulties. Therefore, multiple representations of thereal world are required to support learning and improvingunderstanding. Although GIS tools are complex, they canbe customized to create an effective learning environmentthat combines enactive, iconic, and symbolic representa-tions. Using GIS tools, learners can enactively exploregeographic data, manipulate maps, images, graphs, andtables, and perform "what-if" scenario analyses. Maps andgraphs in GIS correspond to the iconic mode underpinningthe geographic ideas, which enable learners to understandspatial patterns and sense spatial relationships. One maplayer of information stacks on top of another in a GISenvironment. By changing the map symbols, altering thesequence of map layers, or zooming in to specific parts of themap, patterns and relationships can be revealed. Therefore,when putting a geography curriculum and a relevant dataand information base into GIS, a GIS-based learning envi-ronment can be created for doing geographic knowledge.

DESIGN OF A GIS-BASED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTOne of the efforts in integrating GIS into school class-

rooms has been the development of GIS resource packages(such as Singapore's EduGIS). A typical GIS resourcepackage contains isolated lessons of specific topics relatingto a particular curriculum. Each lesson contains a sequenceof step-by-step instructions on how to explore a set orseveral sets of geographic data using a particular GISsoftware system in order to answer a number of questionslisted in a student worksheet. Many users of existingGIS resource packages have found that they could not

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A GIS-Based Learning Environment

take advantage of these packages if they lacked therequired GIS skills. In addition, although these GIS resourcepackages are interactive, learners have little control overthe learning situation and have few opportunities todevelop their higher-order thinking skills. In order tosupport the constructivist approach to geographic learning,we developed a GIS-based learning environment, WorldExplorer.

World Explorer was designed to provide teachers withabundant resources to develop classroom activities and toprovide learners with an interactive computer environmentto conduct inquiry-based learning activities in geographyeducation in Singapore secondary schools. It is an openlearning environment that provides a theme-oriented dataand information base, integrates multiple representationsof information from diverse sources, offers opportuni-ties for learners to interact with geographic information,and facilitates interdisciplinary learning and knowledgeconstruction. This learning environment consists of dataand information resources of particular themes tailoredto Singapore secondary schools and tools for data ac-cess, spatial data exploration and visualization, multipleresource linkages, and dynamic navigation through thedata and information base. It was built using ESRI'sMapObjects and Visual Basic. The data resources currentlyinclude statistical data of world population from 1950-2050 from the U.S. Census Bureau and world developmentindicators from the International Bank for Reconstructionand Development. Four issues in the design of a GIS-basedlearning environment emerged from the development ofthe system. They are the support for learning of geographicinquiry skills, data organization, user interface design, andmultiple resource linkages.

Support for Learning of Geographic Inquiry SkillsA GIS-based learning environment for schools should

be able to not only provide data and information tohelp develop students' content knowledge, but also helpdevelop students' skills for geographic inquiry. Supportfor skill development should be one of the major fac-tors that determine the functional design of a GIS-basedlearning environment. Professional GIS software systemslike ArcView aim to support complex spatial analysis anddata management tasks in scientific investigation, business,and industry and therefore provide sophisticated functionsfor advanced cartography, data integration, and spatialanalysis. A GIS-based learning environment should enablelearners to view, compare, understand, question, interpret,and visualize geographic data and information in ways thatdevelop their geographic understanding and foster theiranalytical skills.

In terms of geographic inquiry skills, Singapore sec-ondary geography syllabus 2004 requires that students beable to:

* extract and organize relevant information fromgeographic data;

"* use and apply geographic knowledge to ir terpretgeographic data; and

"* identify patterns in geographic data and deducerelationships.

More specifically, the students at this level should beequipped with map-reading skills and basic techniques in-cluding recognizing and describing geographic phenomenafrom photographs, extracting and interpreting informationfrom diagrams, graphs, and tables of data, and constructingstatistical representations. Based on these requirements,World Explorer was designed to provide functions formaking maps, charts, and tables, which allow studentsto examine, compare, and construct maps, graphs, orcharts and tables of geographic data in order to identifyand explain patterns in the data and deduce geographicrelationships. By using these functions, learners can defineproblems, create and explore different representations ofdata and information, judge information, solve problems,and draw appropriate conclusions, thus developing theirhigher-order critical thinking skills.

Data OrganizationData are one of the central elements of geographic inquiry

and one of the key components of a GIS-based learningenvironment. A GIS-based learning environment shouldallow students to access data and to receive and createinformation. Therefore, it should contain a database, storingand managing data that

"* connect to themes in the syllabus content;"* are broad enough to allow teachers to design

learning activities and allow students to pursuequestions that arise through the activities; and

"* are sufficient for students to try and apply differentgeographic inquiry skills.

The current version of World Explorer supports two ofeleven themes in Singapore secondary geography syllabus2004: population and development. Its database containsstatistical data describing demographic variables and sta-tistical data describing development indicators of everycountry in the world. The demographic variables includetotal population, birth rate, death rate, dependency ratio,age-sex structures, internal and international nmigration,etc. The development indicators include social indicators,such as life expectancy, infant mortality, and adult illiter-acy rates; economic indicators, such as GDP per capita,employment structure, and economic structure; and in-frastructure indicators, such as total road network andlevel of urbanization. An effective organization of datain the database of a GIS-based learning environment is akey factor in providing learners with the ability to accessdata and arrange information in an effective way andto locate data that are of most interest for a particularactivity. In the database of World Explorer, all the dataare organized based on themes rather than activities.

15

Suxia Liii and Xuan Zhu

Figure 1. The user interface of World Explorer.

Figure 2. Multiple representations in World Explorer.

16

In other words, the data in the learn-ing environment are theme based, notactivity based. It provides freedomfor teachers to select the data from thethemes and design activities accord-ing to lesson requirements. It also al-lows students to select data and inter-act with the content and to select andinterpret data and information intotheir own knowledge. Such a theme-oriented structure represents a phi-losophy of integrated subject matters.It encourages learners to explore re-lated data and information, and facil-itates integrated and interdisciplinarylearning activities. In World Explorer,all statistical data are linked with thespatial data describing the locationsof the countries in the world so theycan be presented in maps. They canalso be presented in tables and charts,such as column charts, pie charts,line graphs, and age-sex pyramids.Therefore, World Explorer supportsmultiple representations of data andinformation.

User Interface DesignUser interface design is crucial

for creating a motivating and ac-tive learning environment. A GIS-based learning environment shouldbe interactive and learner-oriented.Therefore, the user interface ofa GIS-based learning environmentshould be appropriate to the levelat which students can understand,avoid GIS jargons and unnecessaryoperations, and follow the princi-ple of what-you-see-is-what-you-get(WYSIWYG).

World Explorer's user interface hastwo main components: the interfacefor data access and the interface fordata display and exploration. Theinterface for data access is structuredin terms of themes (Fig. 1). Theuser accesses the data of a particulartheme by selecting the menu itemrepresenting the theme. Therefore,the data access in World Explorer isintuitive and straightforward. It alsoallows users to add other geographicfeatures (such as world cities andmajor rivers) to be displayed with theselected thematic data.

Figure 3. Charts in World Explorer.

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A GIS-Based Learning Environment

The interface for data display andexploration is for visualizing andmanipulating the thematic data informs of maps, charts, and tables.When a theme (except populationchange, age-sex structure, economicstructure, and employment structure)is selected, the data will be displayedin a map and a table. Using thetable, the student can select severalcountries to make a columr chart orpie chart (Fig. 2). The theme populationchange is displayed as a line graphaccording to the student's choice ofthe country and time period; age-sex structure is viewed as an age-sexpyramid for a country in a specifiedyear; economic structure and employ-ment structure are all shown as a piechart for a country in a specified year(Fig. 3).

The maps created in the system aremainly choropleth maps, which arethe most popular statistical maps forrepresenting statistical data withinenumeration zones (here, countries).A choropleth map classifies the the-matic data into a number of ranges(classes) and uses different colors toshow different ranges of vzlue overspace. When the cursor is placed ona country, the actual thematic valueof that country will be shown on thescreen (as shown in Figure 2). Whenthe user double-clicks the legend ofa map, a legend editor will pop up.The editor shows the basic statis-tics of the thematic data, includingmean, maximum, minimum, range,and standard deviation and allowsthe student to change the classifi-cation schemes (e.g., the number ofclasses, the lower and upper limitsof a class) and color series to remakethe map, which may improve themap presentation and help recognizethe patterns in the data. This func-tion can also be used for mappingexercises.

Multiple Resource LinkagesA GIS-based learning environment

provides an interactive environmentfor students to conduct geographicinquiry In addition to spatial dataabout the selected themes, it should

17

Figure 4. Multiple resource linkages in World Explorer.

Suxia Lin and Xuan Zhu

provide students with access to other relevant contentresources or materials to develop their understanding.These resources may provide the context for exploringa theme, explanations of relevant concepts, theories ortechnologies, multiple perspectives on geographic issues,and more detailed facts about geographic phenomena.

World Explorer provides functions to link different typesof content resources to a particular theme. The resourcescan be text documents, Web pages, videos, photos, andimages. However, it is recognized that it is impossible toincorporate the content materials to meet all the learningneeds of students. Therefore, the current system does notinvolve the development of the content materials, but itallows teachers to add links directly to various types ofmaterials, structure them in terms of themes, and allowstudents to view these materials by selecting relevantlinks. Once a link is selected, it will launch appropriateprograms available in the users' computer operating system(such as Internet Explorer for viewing the Web pages andMicrosoft Word for reading word documents) to open thelinked materials. Figure 4 shows the interface for adding,deleting, and opening resource links. By providing thefunction for multiple resource linkages, teachers can addadditional non-GIS resources into the learning environmentand students are able to use the linked resources to supporttheir exploration of particular themes. In this way, the GIS-based learning environment offers multiple linkages, hasmultiple perspectives, and provides a means to create moreengaging and dynamic instructional settings supportingmultiple perspectives and multiple modes of learning. Thisenvironment takes advantage of a nonlinear media formtypically in a Web system and allows learners to explorerich and diverse bits of information in their own ways. Froma constructivist point of view, these multiple perspectivescan lead learners to reflect more on their own knowledgeconstruction. In addition, the linked resources and thedatabase discussed in the previous section (Data Organiza-tion) together form a theme-oriented data and informationbase, which allows for both individual and group problem-solving activities for generating and testing new ideas andoffers opportunities for learners to develop complex cog-nitive skills, such as breaking a topic down into subtopics,organizing diverse information, and formulating a pointof view.

SUMMARYAs GIS software and supporting hardware become more

readily available at affordable prices, all levels of GISapplications for education continue to expand. In the lastdecade, many efforts have been dedicated to the develop-ment of GIS teaching and learning resources. However, theadoption of the GIS resources in school education has beenrestricted by the complexity of GIS software, inadequatecurriculum time, isolation of individual lessons, irrelevanceof the materials, and other factors. As an attempt to addresssome of the difficulties and limitations with the use of GISresources in school teaching and learning, we developed

a GIS-based learning environment, World Explorer, whichsupports the constructivist learning approach in Singaporesecondary geography education. Four design issues arosefrom the development of the learning environment. Theseinclude the support for learning of geographic inquiryskills, data organization, user interface design, and multipleresource linkages. These issues and their solutions in WorldExplorer can be applied to the design of a constructivist GIS-based learning environment to support school educationin other subjects (such as science and social studies)and other curricular contexts. At the moment, WorldExplorer supports two themes stipulated in Singaporesecondary geography syllabus 2004, that is, populationand development. It is being used in selected schoolsin Singapore. Feedback from the schools will be used torefine its functionality and interface and to design themodules supporting teaching and learning of other themescontained in Singapore secondary geography syllabus.World Explorer will be further developed to become astructured and interactive GIS-based learning environmentfor geographic inquiry, which supports the learning objec-tives and requirements of Singapore secondary geographysyllabus.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis research is supported by the Academic Research

Fund of National Institute of Education, Nanyang Techno-logical University, Singapore.

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