Thoughts on how the IIGLU e-learning environment can be further developed in the Future

For the project team it feels like IIGLU is only just getting started and what we have developed is a proof of concept e-learning environment which we think has great potential. We have identified a couple of ideas for future development, which include: Within the e-learning software we are developing each learner interaction with the map window is currently being recorded by the software and stored in a database - we call this recording of tutorial states. This has potential in 2 directions:

1. Delivering Feedback as Part of a Game Environment. Users will be able to step through the tutorials and as they complete tasks the system will deliver personalised feedback based on how successfully they completed it. This will be achieved via the use of a weights matrix (defined during user testing) that stores a tolerance ratio, which is the difference between the tutorial state of the teachers actions and the state of the learners interactions. So if the teacher writing the scenario asks the student to create a buffer that is 10m from the point of interest and the user types 15m they will be given points for drawing a buffer but not full points because the distance was wrong.
   
   
2. Tutorial State Tracking & Usability Analysis for Indepth User Understanding: The recording of user interactions with the map tutorial state will enable us to explore how users are interacting with the tutorials and inform further usability analysis and understanding.
   

Extend tutorials to include more geospatial concepts: The e-learning environment is not replicating a desktop GIS but provides a facility for exploring geospatial concepts without the complex interaction functionality of a GIS. With this in mind there is scope to expand the tutorials which currently focus on the question "how do I make a map" to questions such as "how do I collect my data?", "how do I store my data?", "how do I analyse my data?"

Integrate external data repositories automatically into the spatial database: Currently teachers can upload data, in the form of KML files. which as part of the server side of the system are stored in a spatial database (POSTGRE SQL) a future extension to this would be enable users to automatically select data /upload from higher education repositories such as DIGIMAP, ShareGeo, UK Boarders