Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
extended by Cai and Yu (
2009
) is at the core of our geocollaboratory. To reduce
biased, local knowledge influences of traditional PPGIS, (geo)deliberation pro-
poses cooperation and working towards consensus. Cai and Yu (
2009
) introduce a
linear, bottom-up 5 stage process beginning with an introduction to a problem (1),
through exploring issues (2), contributing personal observations (3), establishing a
common ground (4) and developing actions (5). For student fieldwork we suggest
geodeliberation is more accurately visualized as an iterative process of discovering
exceptions to previously defined rules requiring modification of previously held
beliefs or assumptions (Sandoval
2003
; Kirschner et al.
2006
).
To facilitate geodeliberation we require tools allowing communication, visu-
alization, discussion tracking and analysis and sharing of data between partici-
pants. We place these tools within a collaboratory, a virtual space enabling
geographically dispersed participants access to data repositories, conversation
spaces, and even instrumentation (Cerf
1993
; Finholt
2002
). Collaboratories have
not been explored for supporting geographical work in the field but examples exist
for research in physical sciences (Kouzes et al.
1996
; Olson et al.
1998
; Russell
et al.
2001
; Keahey et al.
2002
; Schissel et al.
2002
), health sciences (Craver and
Gold
2002
; Olson et al.
2002
), computational science (Kaur et al.
2001
) and
interdisciplinary research (MacEachren et al.
2006
). Below we outline our infra-
structure that attempts to develop a web-enabled fieldwork collaboratory utilizing
web 2.0 tools and the Twitter social network.
2.2 Delphi
We have built upon the principles of the Delphi approach and subsequent web-
based systems such as e-Delphi (Pike et al.
2009
) in using online map-based social
networking as a collaboratory. The goal of Delphi is to support asynchronous
discussion (Dalkey
1969
; Linstone and Turoff
1975
; Turoff and Hiltz
1996
)by
eliciting structured, iterative input from diverse groups to not necessarily reach
consensus, but identify key elements of a problem or points of agreement and
disagreement. A moderator (an academic staff member in our application)
poses questions, prompts interaction, synthesizes feedback, and guides the group
(students) toward a goal (standardized data collection schema).
By providing moderation and ''expert'' oversight to balance the deliberation
approaches of Rinner et al. (
2008
) and Cai and Yu (
2009
) we impose a top-down
structure to ensure that the bottom-up discovery remains within the bounds of the
problem to be solved and provide guidance to ensure consistency across iterations
of the field course so that data collected from year to year are comparable. This
approach also has pedagogic benefits of blending discovery, experiential and
guided instruction techniques while answering critiques of unsupervised learning
(Kirschner et al.
2006
) and providing for inquiry based learning (Spronken-Smith
et al.
2007
).
