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Using Digital Earth to Expose Students to GIScienceBrandon J. Vogt a & Paddington Hodza aa Department of Geography and Environmental Studies , University of Colorado ColoradoSprings , Colorado Springs , Colorado , USAPublished online: 22 Jul 2013.

To cite this article: Brandon J. Vogt & Paddington Hodza (2013) Using Digital Earth to Expose Students to GIScience, Journalof Geography, 112:5, 205-213, DOI: 10.1080/00221341.2012.712982

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Using Digital Earth to Expose Students to GIScienceBrandon J. Vogt and Paddington Hodza

ABSTRACTStudents in U.S. geography programs faceparticular challenges that may discourage themfrom taking advanced GIScience courses andconsidering geospatial careers. This articleprovides a preliminary discussion of thedevelopment, delivery, and evaluation of aUniversity of Colorado Colorado Springssophomore-level, required geography coursedesigned to address this concern. The course,Digital Earth (DE), introduces students tothe principles, concepts, and applications ofmajor geographic information technologies(GITs) early in their academic careers. Thesuccess of DE is evaluated by examining theextent to which the course excited studentsabout GIScience and motivated them totake higher level elective geospatial courses.Results suggest that DE generates considerablestudent interest in GIScience, prepares studentsreasonably well for elective courses, and greatlyinspires them to seek a geospatial career.

Key Words: Digital Earth, GISciencecurricula, geospatial technologies

Dr. Brandon J. Vogt is an assistant professor inthe Department of Geography and EnvironmentalStudies, University of Colorado Colorado Springs,Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. His researchinterests focus on geomorphology, geomorphometry,and applied geography education.

Dr. Paddington Hodza is an assistant professor anddirector of the certificate in GIScience in the De-partment of Geography and Environmental Studiesat the University of Colorado Colorado Springs,Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. His researchinterests are in the areas of GIS, geovisualization,Internet GIS, participatory GIS, and sociospatialmedia.

INTRODUCTIONGeographic information science (GIScience) is a rapidly developing field whose

foundation is supported by geospatial information technologies (GITs) such asgeographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, geovisualization (GVis),and global positioning systems (GPS). With as much as 80 percent of all datahaving a geospatial component (U.S. Department of Labor 2005), GIScience isbecoming fundamental in nearly every industry (Goodchild 2010). To help placecollege graduates into this workforce, 38 percent of the approximately 1,200 U.S.community colleges offer programs with courses in GITs (Johnson and Sullivan2010). In 2011 there were 197 U.S. four-year colleges and universities that offereda bachelor’s degree in geography (AAG 2012). The Association of AmericanGeographers (AAG) does not tally programs that offer coursework in GITs.However, a 2002 count showed that more than one-third of bachelor’s programsin geography offered coursework in GITs (Tas 2002). In four-year geographyprograms, GIScience courses are traditionally delivered at junior and senior levels(Johnson 2008), creating an aura of complexity and elitism that can intimidate orscare freshmen and sophomores from taking them early in their academic career.Students who eventually enroll in GIScience courses, particularly in departmentswith a strong focus on physical and human geography, often do so merely tofulfill their course credit requirements for graduation.

This raises several important questions. First, how can GIScience coursesbe introduced to students early in their academic career in a way that isnonintimidating? Second, what kind of topics should be covered in these courses?Third, how can more students be encouraged to take GIScience courses and toconsider opportunities and careers in this field?

To address these questions, this article discusses the development, delivery, andevaluation of Digital Earth (DE), a sophomore-level course that debuted in theDepartment of Geography and Environmental Studies (GES) at the Universityof Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) in 2009. The course introduces studentsto GIScience through lectures, readings, hands-on computer-based lab exercises,and field trips to federal organizations and to vendors of geospatial productsand services. Students experience the utility of various GITs, and in doing sointernalize the type of work performed by geographers. The course is designedto excite and prepare students for the next steps in developing their interestsin GIScience. With confidence and basic knowledge of GIScience, students whohave completed DE can choose to take additional geospatial courses and earn ageography degree with a GIScience focus.

BACKGROUNDMotivated by the need to expand its GIScience curriculum, GES conducted a

self-assessment of its program in 2007. The assessment revealed that with theexception of Cartography, which is offered at the junior (i.e., 3000) level, allGIScience course offerings (Introduction to GIS, GPS with GIS, Advanced GIS,Remote Sensing, and Image Processing) in GES at the time were offered at thesenior level (i.e., 4000). The 4000-level courses suffered relatively low enrollmentnumbers, attracting on average sixteen or so students in a classroom designed fortwenty-five.

Several factors may have led to these marginal enrollment numbers. First,offering the majority of GIScience courses at the 4000 level may have cre-ated a perception of difficulty or intimidation for students. In particular,

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underclassmen may have associated the course level witha class to be taken during their senior year. Second, thecourses were cross-listed with graduate level courses withthe same names. It became clear to GES faculty that GITswere underutilized across the UCCS campus and neededto be made more accessible through the department. Toaddress this concern, a GIScience faculty member was hiredand shortly thereafter a new sophomore-level course wasproposed. Digital Earth was first taught fall semester of2009. Geography and Environmental Studies faculty agreedthat the new three-credit-hour course should be required forall majors.

The Digital Earth ConceptThe term Digital Earth was coined by U.S. Vice President

Al Gore in a 1998 motivational speech at the CaliforniaScience Center. Paralleling futurist concepts articulated byBuckminster Fuller (1895–1983), Gore stated in his speech,“I believe we need a Digital Earth. A multi-resolution,three-dimensional representation of the planet, into whichwe can embed vast quantities of geo-referenced data”(Gore 1998). Gore’s vision serves as the concept thatstudents contemplate and strive toward as they discoverthe connectedness and usefulness of GITs.

THE DIGITAL EARTH COURSE

Course GoalsGeography and Environmental Studies faculty

established a set of goals around which the DE coursewould be developed. The primary objectives of DE areto introduce students to GIScience very early in theiracademic careers, to generate student interest in electivegeospatial courses, and to encourage students to consideropportunities and careers in GIScience. Additionally, as alower-level course that would be taken by all majors in thedegree program, GES faculty agreed that DE should clearlydemonstrate the link between GIScience and geography.Last, to ensure that the course introduced students tocurrent GIScience knowledge areas, the faculty involved inteaching the course reviewed the University Consortiumfor Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) book titledBody of Knowledge (DiBiase 2006). The book, publishedby the AAG, outlines a model curriculum for preparingstudents for the GIScience workforce. Each of the tenknowledge areas outlined in the book (e.g., geospatial data,cartography and visualization, GIS and technology andsociety) would be covered in varying degrees in DE. Wedescribe our supporting objectives as follows:

1. Students should be provided with cartographic basics:Early in the semester, students are introduced to basicgeographic and cartographic principles such as mapscale, datums, projections, and map design basics.In addition to providing information that the stu-dents will need to navigate more complex geospatialconcepts in DE, covering these principles reduces

the time spent covering this introductory material insubsequent higher-level geospatial courses.

2. Students should be excited about GIScience: To capturethe attention of students early in the semester, therelevance of GIScience in society is demonstrated byinteracting with a few job placement Web sites. Usingkeywords such as geospatial and GIS, and limitingthe selection area to Denver or Colorado Springs, thestudents see that jobs in GIScience are plentiful andrelevant to society. Also early in the semester, a seriesof applications and case studies that involve GITs andGIScience are presented. These topics, as well as thoseanalyzed in greater depth later in the semester, aregenerally aligned with the instructor’s own researchinterests or include a component that is likely to beof interest to students. As an example, the ColoradoFourteeners (popularly summited mountains in Col-orado that exceed 4,267 m (14,000 ft.)) are the centraltheme surrounding a GIS-based geomorphometry labthat asks geographic questions about physical andanthropogenic processes.

3. Students should explore principles, concepts, and uses ofmajor GITs that could be used to create a Digital Earth:Geographic information systems, remote sensing,geovisualization, and GPS are perhaps the four mostfundamental components of GIScience. In additionto heavily supporting GIScience, the four areas cor-respond to advanced geospatial courses taught atUCCS and they serve as platforms from which the tengoals for GIScience curriculum outlined by the AAG(DiBiase 2006) can be incorporated. Granted sufficientcoverage is given to the core of four fundamentalcomponents of GIScience, faculty teaching the coursecan add other GITs, such as geomorphometry, WebGIS, and programming GIS to the suite of topicscovered in DE.

4. Students should be introduced to basics of GIS andremote sensing software: Faculty-created computer-based labs require students to work in ESRI ArcGIS(GIS software) and IDRISI Taiga or ERDAS Imagine(remote sensing software). These specific softwareenvironments may or may not be industry standards,and may or may not be used at the organizationwhere students join the workforce; however, theycontain well-supported robust tools for analyzingand presenting geospatial data, and they introduceconcepts and interfaces that prove useful for manyGIScience jobs.

5. Students should be able to articulate the role of GISciencein society and explore what GIScientists do: Throughoutthe course, an effort is made to connect GIScienceback to the broad discipline of geography and todiscuss where and how GIScience is applied, withemphasis placed on local examples. Incorporatingreal-world applications through lecture and lab helpsstudents understand what geographers do and howstudents could apply their own interests to one

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of these applications. Field trips to organizationsthat incorporate GIScience also serve to make theconnections between theory and application moretransparent to the students.

Course Structure and DeliveryThough the specific format for material delivery varies

by instructor, the general approach incorporates lectures,online and computer-based labs, field trips, in-classexercises, and written exams. Specifically, most classesbegin with a short lecture that provides the background(theory) of the topic of the day. Armed with backgroundinformation surrounding a specific GIT, students thenmove to computers to begin labs. Throughout the semester,labs gradually increase in functionality and complexity.The first few labs ask basic geographic questions usingvirtual globes such as Google Earth or Skyline Globe. Next,Web map services, such as ArcGIS Online, are introduced.This is followed by labs that incorporate GIS and remotesensing software. Online data delivery portals, such as theU.S. Geological Survey’s Seamless Data Warehouse (fororthoimagery, elevation data, and land cover imagery)and GLOVIS (for Landsat imagery) are used to downloaddata for some labs. Late in the semester, some facultychose to introduce more specialized software packagessuch as MicroDEM (digital terrain modeling software) andUnidata’s Integrated Data Viewer (geoscience visualizationsoftware). Approximately ten labs are completed duringthe fifteen week semester (Table 1).

Deliverables of the labs range from narratives thatarticulate how the technology helped or did not help

Table 1. A sample Digital Earth syllabus.

Week Topic

1 Introduction to course, Digital Earth concept, geospatial program at UCCS, andgeospatial careers

2 An overview of the main geospatial information technologies for creating a DigitalEarth and addressing real-world issues

3 Fundamentals of cartography4 GIS basics5 Introduction to GIS software and creating a GIS map6 Class visit to geospatial company7 Introduction to GPS8 GPS, ground control points, and georeferencing9 Exam 1

10 Geovisualization I: Exploring the world using virtual globes11 Geovisualization II: Creating a multimedia virtual field trip12 Class visit to federal agency13 Remote sensing basics14 Visual satellite image analysis and interpretation15 Exploring the impact of a Digital Earth on society and vice versa16 Exam 2

understanding a particular process, to creating maps,imagery, tables, histograms, and animations, to brief grouppresentations that discuss lab outcomes. In some cases,students are required to post all gradable material to theirpersonal Web sites. Complementing the goals of the course,this Web delivery format helps students understand filestructures, file transfer protocols, the importance of fileand directory naming conventions, and introduces conceptssuch as client-server relationships and Web hosting.

Field trips are offered two to three times each semester.Destinations include the Pueblo, Colorado NationalWeather Service (NWS) Forecast Office, the National Centerfor Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado,the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Lakewood, Colorado,as well as Colorado Springs, Colorado-based for-profitgeospatial product and service delivery companies such asSanborn. Speakers at each of these destinations are askedby the faculty member to make explicit how various GITsare utilized in-house, the geospatial skills they look for injob applications, and to discuss career opportunities withinthe respective organizations. Keeping local opportunities atthe forefront of field trips is especially important at UCCSconsidering the high percentage of students that remain inthe region after graduation.

Because of the survey approach used to cover multipleGITs in DE, the course can be taught by geography facultywho have a strong background in one or more GIT butnot necessarily a dedicated GIScience focus. As examples,faculty with research interests resting in human geographymight focus on census data and its analysis in GIS whilefaculty with research interests resting in geomorphol-ogy might dedicate time to digital terrain models andtheir analysis using raster-based geospatial analytics. This

approach, however, can be taxingon faculty who must refresh orrelearn basics of one or more GITsthat are required as per the core offour.

EVALUATING THE DIGITALEARTH COURSE

Digital Earth was offered seventimes between August 2009 andDecember 2011. During this studyperiod, 172 students completed thecourse.

Evaluation Setting and MethodsThe DE course was evaluated

mainly in a classroom that cansupport up to twenty-five students.Two questionnaire surveys and aparticipant observation techniquewere used in the evaluation ex-ercise. One questionnaire, the fac-ulty course questionnaire (FCQ),

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was designed by the University of Colorado (CU) Systemand is administered in class at the end of every course atUCCS. The other is termed the study questionnaire and wasdeveloped specifically for this research by the instructorauthors.

Additionally, through observation the instructors evalu-ated the reactions of students to various topics and activitiesduring lectures, field data collection exercises, and classvisits to various geospatial organizations in Colorado. Theinstructors noted the level of student participation in classactivities and the quality of student responses to variousquestions posed.

The FCQ includes nine closed-ended questions. Using ascale of 1 to 6, the questions seek to measure such issues asa student’s prior level of interest in the course, how muchwas learned, and the intellectual challenge of the course.

Although useful in evaluating DE, the FCQ lacks somequestions that are considered important to this study.For this reason, the authors designed an additional studyquestionnaire to generate insight into the extent to whichDE excited students about GIScience, motivated them totake additional elective courses, and promoted studentsto consider careers in this field. This questionnaire askedone open- and several closed-ended questions (Appendix).The open-ended question asked students to list the electivegeospatial course topics they found relatively easier tounderstand after taking DE. The closed-ended questionssought to evaluate various issues on a five-point Likertscale. A value of 1 on this scale indicated a student’sdisagreement with a stated position and a value of 5, strongagreement. While the FCQ was used seven times duringthe study period, the study questionnaire was administeredonce at the end of 2011 to students who enrolled in at leastone elective geospatial course after completing DE. Thestudy questionnaire was distributed in elective geospatialcourses online using www.surveymonkey.com.

Instructor ObservationsAs expected, most of the students who enrolled in DE

did not have any prior sound ideas about the conceptof a Digital Earth or the different GITs and their role ingeographic inquiry and in creating a Digital Earth. The firstfew lectures, which provided an overview of these topicsand the broad field of GIScience, were thus very informativeto the students. Initially, the students found it easier tounderstand the concept of different GITs using everydayexamples of tools such as MapQuest and Google Earth.Videos were also shown to help students better understandthe various digital geospatial tools. Topics covered in thevideos included traffic routing, emergency management,and natural resource mapping.

The level of student participation and interest variedfrom topic to topic. New and fairly complex topics suchas those that introduced map projections generated verylittle student participation. Conversely, topics that studentswere already familiar with, such as GPS and its use in

geocaching, created considerable interest. For example, thestudents were excited by an exercise that allowed themto leave the classroom and use handheld GPS devices inthe field to collect several ground control points for usein georeferencing a campus map. In-class exercises suchas those that asked students to provide arguments forand against the view that MapQuest is a valid GIS led tointeresting and oftentimes critical GIT-related discussions.

Nearly all students taking DE have interacted withGoogle Earth prior to taking the class, and were excitedto use the virtual globe for tasks other than creating mapsand direction finding. As such, the discussions surroundingvirtual globes appeared to be quite interesting to students.In the course, virtual globes serve to demonstrate geospa-tial storytelling and to inspire curiosity about how thetechnology can be used to solve more complex geospatialproblems. With little assistance in using Google Earth, thestudents are able to create virtual tours of areas of interest,explore various Global Awareness Layers (project layers inGoogle Earth that showcase particular global problems),and develop a deeper understanding of the impact ofhuman activities such as mountaintop removal in WestVirginia.

Student reactions to field trip experiences are quitefavorable, and based on questions asked while on-site andfollow-up in-class discussions, students appear to extractsalient information and seem to be truly inspired. At theU.S. Geological Survey in Lakewood, Colorado, studentsexperience the operations behind the National Ice Core Lab,the Rock Core Research Center, tour the massive RockyMountain Map Center, and hear lectures about GeoPDFs,terrestrial lidar, and real-time hydrographic measurements.Perhaps the most exciting moment for students on any fieldtrip occurs during a demonstration given by staff at theNational Center for Atmospheric Research’s VisualizationLab. The students, who are sitting around a conferencetable wearing 3D glasses, literally duck their heads to avoidcontact with the x axis of a (virtual) rotating histogramshowing climate data.

Faculty Course Questionnaires (FCQs)The nature of student responses in the FCQ is influenced

by several factors. These factors include the number ofstudents enrolled in a class, whether the course is loweror upper level, and the effectiveness of course instructors.On a scale of 1 to 6, where 1 denotes disagreement and6 denotes high agreement, the 173 students who took DEthrough December 2011 indicated that their average levelof prior interest in the course material was 4.2. On average,each student spent between four and six hours each weekattending the class and working on assignments or othercourse activities. The course demands were considered justabout right, that is, neither too high to diminish confidencenor too low to cause discouragement. Specifically, theaverage intellectual challenge of the course was rated as4.5, a value precisely matching the average for all 2000-level

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courses in GES as well as those offered across the UCCScampus. The average rating for how much students learnedin DE was a 5.0, a value that is 0.3 higher than the averagesfor GES and for the UCCS campus. This suggests thatthe students acquired considerable GIScience knowledge.Perhaps for this reason, the students regarded the courseto have been overall a success and gave it a rating of 5.0, avalue 0.3 higher than averages for all 2000-level GES andUCCS courses.

Instructor-Created Study QuestionnaireTwenty-one of the 173 students who had taken DE

completed the study questionnaire. Disseminating thestudy questionnaire the week that students were busy withfinal exams may have partly led to this low response rate.Figure 1 summarizes the distribution and frequency of theparticipants’ feedback to various questions in the studyquestionnaire. At the time of this study, the participantswere either junior (i.e., third year) or senior (i.e., fourthyear) level students (Fig. 1(a)). Seven of these students tookDE while in their second year (i.e., sophomore) and nonedid so in their first (i.e., freshman) year in college (Fig. 1(b)).

Nearly all of the participants went on to enroll in atleast one elective geospatial course (Fig. 1(c)). The mostpopular electives were Introduction to GIS and Image Pro-cessing, which attracted nine participants each. Relativelyfew students decided to take the advanced level coursesInternet GIS and Advanced GIS. This suggests that manyof the students had no further interest in expanding theirGIScience knowledge beyond what they learned in DE, orstudents found the content of the prerequired Introductionto GIS course too challenging or uninteresting and werereluctant to take additional upper-level courses.

The majority of the participants of the survey felt that DEmotivated them in some way to extend their knowledge ofGIScience in elective geospatial courses (Fig. 1(d)). Elevenof these participants considered DE to have played atleast a “great” role in this regard. This view was in totalcontrast to that of two students who indicated that DE did“not at all” encourage them to take any elective geospatialcourse. This reaction is feasible because GES has three otheracademic tracks that students can follow to complete theirundergraduate degree.

To varying levels, most of the students who were inspiredto enroll in elective geospatial courses regarded DE ashaving effectively prepared them for some of the topics theycovered. Five of these students were reportedly prepared toat least a “great extent.” More than half of the participantswere, however, of the opinion that DE only marginallyprepared them for the content of various elective courses(Fig. 1(e)). This view could be explained by the variationsin teaching approaches used in DE versus the upper-levelelective courses. The teaching methods used in DE are notparticularly time demanding on students and the coursedoes not require textbook readings. The topics changeevery two or so weeks. The upper-level courses such as

Introduction to GIS, Remote Sensing, and Internet GISfocus on one main technology and are supplemented withtime-consuming lab tutorials and group and independentresearch projects in which GITs are used to answer aresearch question. These upper-level and quite differentteaching strategies may leave students feeling unpreparedfor the elective courses.

Every participant who took DE indicated that the coursemade it relatively easy in some way to understand some ofthe content of elective geospatial courses (Fig. 1(f)). Con-siderable exposure to new, more complex, and more chal-lenging geospatial concepts in these courses may have ledonly six of the participants to suggest that the course waseffective to at least a “great extent” in simplifying thedifficult topics. Building upon what was learned in DE,students identified several elective course topics that wereparticularly easy to understand. These included geospatialdata models, the functions and capabilities of GIS software,the process of geocoding, the principles and concepts ofGPS, working with remotely sensed imagery, the role ofGIScience in geography, and the state of the geospatial jobmarket (Table 2).

Topics such as those that examined the evolution ofGIS in geography and explored the role of differentGITs in addressing physical geography, human geography,and human-environment interaction problems may havecontributed to the perception of most students that DEsuccessfully established a link between the broader fieldsof GIScience and geography. Twelve of the students feltthat the course was effective to at least a “great extent” inconnecting the two fields (Fig. 1(g)). Interestingly, after onlya cursory exposure to the larger field of GIScience, thirteenstudents were so excited about the field that they felt greatlyinspired to seek a geospatial career (Fig. 1(h)). Only threestudents, two of whom failed to take any elective geospatialcourse, indicated that DE did “not at all” encourage themto pursue a geospatial career.

DISCUSSIONThis article has presented a preliminary evaluative

analysis of a DE course. The course evolved out ofthe need to introduce and excite undergraduate studentsabout GIScience very early in their college years. Thearticle discussed the course goals, the course format, andexplored the effectiveness of DE in persuading students toconsider additional GIScience coursework and careers inthe discipline.

Nineteen of the twenty-one students who completedthe study questionnaire created by the authors enrolledin at least one GIScience-related course offered in thedepartment except Programming GIS and Image Pro-cessing. An equal number of students surveyed tookIntroduction to GIS and Remote Sensing, while just a fewless took Cartography. The popularity of these three coursesprobably reflects the fact that they are follow-up coursesto DE. The courses are also soft-enforced prerequisites

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Figure 1. Distribution and frequency of the participants’ feedback to questions in the study questionnaire.

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Table 2. Geospatial topics identified by students as easier to understand after taking DE.

Geospatial Topics

GIS software GeomorphometryConcepts of GIS GIS toolsDigital elevation models (DEMs) Google Earth and KML filesDigitizing How GPS worksDraping Neighborhood analysisExcel geocoding in ArcMap Raster and vector data modelsQuantitative geomorphology Remote sensingRole of geospatial technologies in geography The current geospatial job marketUse of aerial and satellite imagery The paradigm of truly 3D data

(e.g., must obtain instructor’s consent to register) for moreadvanced GIScience courses. The perceived high level ofintellectual challenge associated with 4000-level coursessuch as Internet GIS and Advanced GIS perhaps explainswhy very few surveyed students enrolled in these courses.

The DE course excited many of the students to such anextent that the majority of them immediately decided totake elective geospatial courses and even consider geospa-tial careers. The introductory level at which the course istaught and the range of individual GITs that is coveredin the course make it very difficult to provide in-depthpreparation for the upper and more complex geospatialcourses. Regarding each GIT covered, DE focused mainlyon addressing basic but relevant questions such as: What isit? What does it do? What are its inputs and outputs? Whyshould I use it? In what situations can I use it? How can I useit? How can I integrate it with other geospatial informationtechnologies? Because these fundamental questions do notnecessarily go deeper into the topics that are coveredin upper-level geospatial courses, some of the studentsviewed DE as providing only limited preparation for moreadvanced geospatial topics.

Though virtually all of the students who took DE were“digital natives” (Prensky 2001), surprisingly some hadvery limited basic computer skills. These students initiallyhad problems managing their data file. This was usuallythe case when students began their assignments at homeand wanted to finish them on campus. Also, some studentsencountered problems when transferring files from flashdrives to their campus workspace or when retrieving datafrom shared folders.

Since its inception, DE has had a positive impact on thegeospatial program at UCCS. Higher student enrollmentnumbers have been shown to follow geospatial curriculumdevelopment (Yu, Huynh, and McGehee 2011), and this wascertainly the case at UCCS with DE. Specifically, studentenrollment in Introduction to GIS and other advancedGIS courses rose from an average of sixteen to reachthe maximum capacity of twenty-five students. In somesemesters, course enrollment surpassed capacity by up to

four students. Enrollment in Inter-net GIS also increased steadily fromtwelve in fall 2009 to eighteen in fall2011. The higher enrollments andincreased interest in GITs encour-aged GES to introduce an under-graduate certificate in GIScience inspring 2011 with seven studentsgraduating with the certificate bythe end of the year. The certificateprogram is open to any UCCSstudent, and together with the DEcourse, has helped increase thevisibility of the geospatial programon campus and has attracted sev-eral nongeography students from

majors including biology, anthropology, and computerscience.

Though DE is an introductory course, it can be demand-ing for instructors. The course requires instructors not onlyto have a rich knowledge base of the field of GIScience,but also to deliver material in a way that engages students,provides them with sufficient geospatial knowledge, andleaves them yearning for more advanced knowledge. Thisexpectation can become challenging considering that not allinstructors are experts in all GITs taught in DE. Geographydepartments could thus benefit by having a team ofinstructors qualified to teach DE who would each bringspecific geospatial skills and diverse content to the mix.

CONCLUSIONThis study analyzed the extent to which a required

Digital Earth course achieved its design objectives mainlyby exposing undergraduate students to GIScience earlyin their college years and encouraging them to follow aGIScience track in a geography department. The resultsof this preliminary study suggest that the course washighly successful in these areas. The course helped preparestudents for the materials they would encounter in upper-level geospatial courses and it inspired most students toconsider a geospatial career.

Because DE was implemented as a required course forall majors who started their degree program in or after fallof 2009, and is a prerequisite for all upper-level geospatialelective courses, it is no longer possible to assess the degreeto which DE helped/did not help students perform betterin upper-level geospatial elective courses (at the time ofwriting, the vast majority of the students who startedtheir degree programs before the implementation of DEhave since graduated). The authors recognize this missedwindow of opportunity during which a comparative study(those who took DE versus those who did not) could haveprovided insight into the academic effectiveness of thecourse. However, in a follow-up study, the authors willextract additional information about the effectiveness of DEby analyzing FCQ results from upper-level elective courses

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Brandon J. Vogt and Paddington Hodza

taught before and after the implementation of DE. Thisapproach would lack the more detailed information thatwas extracted from the study questionnaire but would havea much larger sample size.

Digital Earth is unlike other GIScience courses in thatit provides only limited information about a suite of GITsas to provide sufficient background to explore the electivecourses that provide higher-level foundational content.With foci placed on exciting students about GIScience andpreparing them to pursue a suite of additional GISciencecourses, DE is by design limited in its delivery of in-depthfoundational material. This tradeoff seems practicableconsidering DE introduces all majors—even those with nointerest in GIScience beyond the course—to the breadth ofthe discipline of geography.

REFERENCESAAG (Association of American Geographers). 2012.

Geography departments in the Americas. http://www.aag.org/cs/jobs and careers/preparing for ageography career/geography departments americas(accessed July 11, 2012).

DiBiase, D. 2006. Geographic Information Science and Technol-ogy: Body of Knowledge. Washington, D.C.: Associationof American Geographers.

Goodchild, M. F. 2010. Twenty years of progress: GISScience in 2010. Journal of Spatial Information Science 1(2012): 3–20.

Gore, A. 1998. The Digital Earth: Understanding ourplanet in the 21st century. http://www.isde5.org/al gore speech.htm (accessed May 8, 2012).

Johnson, A. 2008. Geospatial education at U.S. communitycolleges. In Teaching Geographic Information Science andTechnology in Higher Education, ed. D. Unwin, K. Foote,N. Tate, and D. DiBiase, pp. 185–198. London: Wileyand Sons.

Johnson, A., and D. Sullivan. 2010. Geospatial educationat U.S. community colleges: Background, challenges,and opportunities. Journal of the Urban and RegionalInformation Systems Association 22 (2): 5–13.

Prensky, M. 2001. Digital natives, digital immigrants. On theHorizon 9 (5): 1–6.

Tas, H. I. 2002. Status of GIS education at the highereducation institutions in the U.S. 2002 ESRI conferenceproceedings, 22nd Annual ESRI International UserConference.

Yu, J., N. Huynh, and T. McGehee. 2011. Vertical integrationof geographic information sciences: A recruitmentmodel for GIS education. Journal of Geography 110 (5):191–199.

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Using Digital Earth to Expose Students to GIScience

APPENDIX: STUDY QUESTIONNAIRE

The purpose of this questionnaire is to get your feedback about Digital Earth (GES 2050). The questionnaire is voluntaryand you may or may not wish to answer any or all questions. It is designed to take about five minutes to complete.

1. What is your current academic level?(i) Freshman (ii) Sophomore (iii) Junior (iv) Senior

2. During which academic level did you take Digital Earth?(i) Freshman (ii) Sophomore (iii) Junior (iv) Senior

3. Select (check) the geospatial course(s) you took after taking Digital Earth.

[ ] Cartography[ ] Introduction to GIS[ ] Internet GIS[ ] Advanced GIS[ ] Programming GIS[ ] Introduction to Remote Sensing[ ] Image Processing[ ] GPS with GIS

4. To what extent did Digital Earth motivate you to take the geospatial course(s) in question 3 above?(i) Not at all (ii) Small extent (iii) Some extent (iv) Great extent (v) Very great extent

5. To what extent did Digital Earth prepare you for the geospatial course(s) in question 3 above?(i) Not at all (ii) Small extent (iii) Some extent (iv) Great extent (v) Very great extent

6. To what extent was the material covered in the course(s) in question 3 above easier to understand after takingDigital Earth?(i) Not at all (ii) Small extent (iii) Some extent (iv) Great extent (v) Very great extent

7. Please provide some examples of the geospatial concepts or topics covered in the course(s) in question 3 abovethat were easier to understand after taking Digital Earth.

8. To what extent did Digital Earth help you connect various geospatial technologies with the broad discipline ofgeography?(i) Not at all (ii) Small extent (iii) Some extent (iv) Great extent (v) Very great extent

9. To what extent has Digital Earth motivated you to pursue a geospatial career?(i) Not at all (ii) Small extent (iii) Some extent (iv) Great extent (v) Very great extent

Thank you.

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