What is the IIGLU product? (The final Product Post, not the last ever blog post)

IIGLU is more than just a piece of software!

Geographical Information Systems are hard to use – IIGLU makes them easier.

IIGLU stands for Interactive Integrated Geospatial Learning and Understanding.

This is a framework for teaching geospatial information concepts to learners outside the discipline of GIS. So how will IIGLU work for you?

Are you a teacher, lecturer or geospatial expert?

• You will first need to develop a Use Case which will help your target audience understand geospatial concepts. Click HERE to see some examples – please feel free to make use of these yourself.
  
  
• Once you’ve done this, you will need to build this use case into a e-learning scenario (the software environment is in alpha phase of development an will launch at the end of FEB 2012). This is a little like writing a script for a play – see HERE for examples of the preparation process and HERE for a video of how to build the scenario using the IIGLU tools.
  
  
• The final part of your work is to bridge the gap between your scenario and a real GIS environment – you do this via the Wiki. Click HERE to see some examples of how.

Are you a learner new to geospatial / digital mapping?

• We’ve developed a decision tool to help you find out where to start – click HERE to see how it works.

• Links in the decision tool will take you to an e-learning environment, where you will be able to interact with maps, videos and text and learn how GIS concepts can be applied in your discipline. Click HERE to see a video of the e-learning environment

• If you want to find out how to do the things you’ve learned about in a GIS software package such as ArcGIS, you can follow the links to the Wiki – click HERE for some examples.

Next Steps:

IIGLU is in Alpha development phase at the moment, with an expected roll out in Spring 2012.

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

Project Blog Posts - Table of Contents

Development of our Product - IIGLU

• 11/what-is-iiglu-product-final-product.html: Product description of IIGLU framework
  
• 11/iiglu-elevator-pitch.html: Elevator Pitch for IIGLU framework
  
• 02/project-plan-post-5-of-7-project-team.html: Project team
• 11/iiglu-our-logo.html : Developing a brand for our product
• 11/thoughts-on-how-iiglu-e-learning.html: Futures ideas for development of the e-learning environment
• 09/iiglu-how-usable-will-it-be.html: Discussion on how usable will the e-learning component of the IIGLU framework be, with screen cast
  
• 08/development-update.html: Development update in the form of a screen cast
• 06/decision-time-google-maps-vs-openlayers.html :Discussion on which development environment we should use
  
• 05/g3-few-months-in.html: Progress report
• 02/project-plan-post-3-of-7-risk-analysis.html: Analysis of project risks
  
• 02/project-plan-post-2-of-7-benefits-to.html: Benefits of the project
  
• 02/beyond-g3-project.html: Thinking ahead about after the project
  
• 02/project-outline.html: Description of the G3 project

Understanding Users:

• 08/what-is-todays-equivalent-to-jon-snows.html: Thoughts on the modern day equivalent of the John Snow Map
• 08/open-geo-health-workshop.html : Exploring issues of GIS in Health Care
• 05/if-gis-were-language.html: User interviews raised the question of whether you need to understand the language of GIS to grasp map making?
  
• 05/importance-of-knowing-location.html: User Interviews with stressed the importance of teaching non technical disciplines the power of knowing a location - which can be digitally mapped
  
• 04/gis-not-spss.html: Undergraduate consider SPPS and GIS to be the same quantitative skillset
  
• 03/urban-design-user-expert-interview.html: Summary of user interview using a Word Cloud
  
• 03/congratulate-me-im-data-scientist.html: Thinking about new roles as data scientists
  
• 02/background-narrative-for-g3-bridging.html: Summary of our typical user , a use case
  

Understanding User Interactions with Geographic Information and GIS

• /07/just-quick-pointer-to-recording-of-my.html : Presentation of eye tracking experiments given at State of The Map, Vienna.
  
• 07/gis-are-still-hard-to-use-interface.html : Discussion on notoriety of desktop GIS and how difficult they are to use
  
• 07/state-of-map-presentation.html : Summary of the Presentation given at State of The Map
  
• 05/moving-search.html: Example of the Eye Tracking Experiments
  
• 05/child-of-ten-standard-of-user-interface.html: discussion on usability from the perspective of a child of 10.
  

Teaching and Learning Geographic Information

• 11/yes-it-is-possible-to-do-phd-in-gis.html : Claire's thoughts on Spatial is Special
• 10/what-makes-spatial-special-my-kates.html: Kate's thoughts on Spatial is Special
• 07/reflective-teaching-practice-2-do-i.html : Thoughts on teaching spatial databases
• 07/we-asked-readers-of-blog-to-identify.html: Results of questionnaire posted on blog asking about prioritising geographic concepts for new learners
  
• 06/metaphor-for-introducing-teaching-map.html: Using metaphors to teach map projections
  
• 06/reflective-teaching-practice-do-i-need.html: Thoughts on teaching map projections
• 05/is-gis-discipline-or-inter-discipline.html: Thoughts on the state of GIS as a discipline
  
• 05/quick-question-on-geographic-concepts.html: Questionnaire post on blog asking readers how they would prioritise geographic concepts for new learners
• 05/important-geographic-and-cartographic.html:
• 02/representations-of-scale.html: Thoughts on use of scale in scenario development
  

IIGLU - The Elevator Pitch!

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are hard to use – IIGLU makes it easier. IIGLU is an interactive online framework to support learning and teaching of geographic and GIS concepts.

If you want to make a map for the first time OR are interested in teaching students/new learners how to make a digital map with existing data - IIGLU will support you through the process.

For teachers, lecturers and geospatial experts

IIGLU helps you to develop a use case to describe the characteristics of your learners and identify their learning needs. You can develop and build e-learning scenarios for students to play back. Supporting students learn geospatial concepts without worrying about the complex interactions required of a desktop GIS. Finally to bridge the gap between the e-learning scenarios and a real desktop GIS package a wiki enables you to share your knowledge.

For new learners of geospatial/ digital mapping

IIGLU helps you learn how to make a map for the first time - you can use a decision support tool to guide your mapping choices. The IIGLU e-learning environment allows you to interact with maps, videos, text and images usng examples from specific disciplines to walk you through the conceptual framework of digital mapping. Finally you can apply your learning to desktop GIS using the knowledge base on the IIGLU wiki.

G3 a Few Months In

We’re now a few months in to the G3 project, and here’s the story so far:

- We’ve conducted and documented a number of in-depth interviews with members in our target groups of urban design, urban anthropology, history and environmental management.

- The interviews have been analysed, common themes and tasks identified, scenarios developed and then ‘translated’ into the language of GIS so that they can be implemented as teaching tools. We’re now looking at identifying data for each scenario.

- We’ve designed the end-to-end architecture of our scenario creation tool – this wasn’t as easy as a simple web site design, given that we want to build something extensible – i.e. that can grow as more scenarios are identified.

- We’ve set up our webserver, migrated a massive amount of existing reference code across, and started looking at the design of our scenarios from the end user perspective. We plan to use a step-by-step approach to allow our students to move through the learning process at their own page. The tool will validate that they understand the concepts as they go through.

- We’ve talked to a number of people involved in GIS teaching to identify how they approach introducing people from other disciplines to GIS.

So, we’d like to take the opportunity to say thanks to all the people who have participated in the project so far! We’ve promised most of you anonymity, but watch this space to see how your input has shaped the work.

Project Plan Post 5 of 7 - Project Team, Relationships and End-User Engagement

If you've been reading this blog so far, you've hopefully now got some ideas about the JISC G3 project (if not, please let us know!). So, the next post in this series is the 'who we are' post. However, a far more important issue before we get to that is 'who we hope you might be' - in other words, who makes up the community for the project?

There are two main communities for the project - firstly, a community of end users. You will typically be students, researchers or academics in departments such as archaeology, anthropology, computer science, health research or medicine, biology, environmental science and so forth. You will probably have used a web map (e.g. a Google Map) at some point, and may have heard of a Geographical Information System but think that the software is very complicated and that you can't use your data on a map. We hope that the tools developed by this project will give you some ideas about GIS and how you could use it, and make it less scary. We'd love to hear from you with any ideas as to how to do this and how you think you could use maps in your work.

The second community we hope to form is a group of GIS developers who can take our tools and add scenarios and expert information beyond the life of the project. These people will know what a GIS is, and also have web development and database skills. The will, perhaps, make use of the tools we develop for their own teaching, and will also add additional use cases and scenarios to the project.


And finally, who are we? We are a team of four people based at UCL and the University of Portsmouth. Our skills cover GIS, Human-Computer Interaction and Web Development and we are all involved in GIS teaching. In alphabetical order:

Claire Ellul used to be a GIS consultant and is now a Lecturer in GIS at UCL, specialising in spatial databases and web and mobile GIS. She was responsible for the technical development of the Community Maps project, and will oversee technical issues on JISCG3. Claire is Principal Investigator on the project.





Kate Jones is a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Portsmouth. She specialises in Usability in GIS and GIS and Health. Kate is responsbile for the development of the use-cases/scenarios, making sure we understand our users on the JISCG3 project. Kate is Co-investogator on the project.






Muki Haklay is a Senior Lecturer in GIS at UCL, specialising in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Usability in GIS as well as having extensive research expertise in Citizen Science and Community engagement. He will provide HCI expertise to the project.





Patrick Weber is a Research Fellow in GIS at UCL. He specialises in spatial and location-based analysis but also has extensive technical expertise with open source GIS, and will be responsible for the technical development of the JISCG3 project.

Project Plan Post 3 of 7 - Risk Analysis and Success of Plan

On one hand, this project is relatively low risk - we are dealing with technology (OpenLayers, a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database, Javascript, PHP, HTML) that we have already used extensively as a team, and working from a starting point of a previous project (Community Maps).

However, experience shows that the technology aspects of this project should set a few small alarm bells ringing - they are all open source, and this is risky in terms of available support and problem solving. Equally, we run the risk (as does any technology related development or teaching) of potential changes in versions requiring upgrades to our code (the upgrade of our Community Maps project due to a changing Google Maps API highlighted how extensive some of these version changes could be).

How to mitigate this risk - well, the relatively short time-span for this project (Feb - October 2011) allows us to select a version of each platform and stick to it. Beyond that, as we will be making extensive use of the tools in our own teaching, we will upgrade as and when required - documenting our code as we go along will help to facilitate this, as will opening the code up as a resource to the GIS community.

And other risks? We could discover, having talked to our user community, that GIS really isn't for them (or they're just not happy to engage in the project). We hope that this is unlikely - our users are members of interdisciplinary project teams which plan to make use of GIS - but we have identified fall-back scenarios in health epidemiology and coastal environment monitoring, just in case.

Project Plan Post 2 of 7 - Benefits to the Sector and Achievements for Host Institutions

The JISCG3 project provides us with a very useful the opportunity to gain an increased understanding of the mental models used by non-experts when engaging with GIS, which in turn will benefit our teaching and research activities. In fact, as part of the project, we are working with anthropologists, historians, geographers and environmental scientists - and they will provide a really important input when developing our scenarios and concetps.

We intend to make use of the JISCG3 tools during our teaching, and hope that colleagues will also do so - all the code will be published for reuse. As part of the project, we also hope to identify opportunities for further interdisciplinary research or teaching collaboration, as a result of the greater understanding of GIS gained by our expert users and equally of our greater understanding of their research domains.

Project Plan Post 1 of 7 - Aims, Objectives and Final Outputs

Most students and researchers are familiar with using maps on the internet or on a mobile phone – in particular, Google Maps - for tasks such as finding their way between A and B or finding the nearest cash machine or Italian restaurant. They can easily navigate around the map, and know that clicking on a point will pop-up some information.

What they maybe don’t realize, however, is that every time they do this, they are using a Geographical Information System (GIS). What’s more, a GIS could be a very useful tool for their studies and research as it provides a different way of looking at data –by putting data on a map, you can identify links, trends and patterns that aren’t obvious when you are looking at spreadsheets or databases.

The JISC G3 Project – Bridging the Gap between the GeoWeb and GIS – has been set up to overcome the disconnect between using GIS for day-to-day activities and as part of research or studies. We will develop a number of web-based tools to allow students to start with the familiar (panning and browsing a web map) and move towards more advanced GIS concepts. This will allow them to then make use of the more sophisticated GIS packages that are available to them (ArcGIS, MapInfo Professional, Geomedia Professional). Rather than teach abstract concepts, the tools will focus on scenarios related to discipline-specific use-cases, highlighting areas where GIS could be useful to individual groups.


The final output of the project will be a series of open-source tools and scenarios, which can then be added to by others as and when required.