Developing a learning line on GIScience in education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Developing a learning line on GIScience in education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

The idea of the project rose from following facts:
– job opportunities: The EC identified Geo-ICT as part of the digital economy being vital for innovation, growth, jobs and European competitiveness.
However, there is a clear mismatch between workforce demand and supply, resulting in this sector being a shortage occupation sector.
– Geo-ICT including geospatial thinking is essential in education. It implies visualisation, manipulation, interpretation and explanation of information … at different geographic scales using GI tools. Its importance has been acknowledged in the “European Reference Framework, Key Competences for Lifelong Learning” document published by the DG EAC.
The project was thus designed to create a series of resources which introduce students to geospatial thinking using these GI tools, develop their ability to use them, be critical of them, based on a learning line from age 12 – 18 years.
Although some GI-related materials are already available, teachers so far do not tend to use them. The main blocking factor was that the notion of GIScience, GI or spatial thinking is uncommon in the curriculum of almost all European countries. So, we needed to introduce and institutionalize it within the curricula, taking into account the level of difficulty of each task connected to the age group by using the concept of a learning line.
A learning line is an educational term used for progression in the construction of knowledge and skills, designed to have an increasing level of complexity, starting from easier, more basic skills and knowledge, and developing into difficult, more challenging knowledge and skills.

The GI Learner consortium consisted of seven European partners covering six countries: Belgium, UK, Spain, Austria, Poland and Romania. The partnership consisted of various types of organizations and institutions operating within the field of education, who each brought their own experience and expertise to the consortium: two universities, four secondary schools and a pan-European professional association. The schools were of different types and took students of broadly similar age range.

Following the initial start-up meeting, the project was initiated by doing an in-depth analysis of the most important literature on learning lines and spatial thinking. Ten spatial thinking competencies then emerged following lengthy discussions and peer review and amendments and adaptations. For curriculum development purposes, they have been further developed into a learning line, using three levels of complexity (described as A, B and C).
To link the competencies to real curriculum content all partners scanned the curricula from their countries to identify opportunities to introduce GIScience in a range of subjects.
Next, for each year group different learning materials and exercises were written, trialled, evaluated and edited. These were linked to the curriculum and mapped to the competencies and level of difficulty for each group. To test the developed materials the cooperation of the target group was obtained: the pupils at the partner schools. They selected pupils K7 (12 y) and K10 (15 y) became the ‘guinea pigs’ for 3 years, as they had to ‘test the test’ by accessing the materials and give their feedback and provide their proposed amendments. This led to adjustments and guidelines when developing the newer exercises.
To measure the impact of the learning lines on spatial thinking a self-test was developed, it consists of several parts, related to the selected learning competencies and level of complexity. The tests were completed at the start of the project (providing a zero-value) and at the end of each year to assess progress.
Finally, a publication with amendments for inclusion into the national curricula was produced and disseminated among the different national Ministries of Education. This was intended to provide a rationale for the inclusion of GISciences within curriculum change, and perhaps also by qualification awarding bodies.

Materials and resources will continue to remain freely available online (shared under a Creative Commons license). Translations have been completed in all the languages of the project partners involved, additionally also a French translation was completed to widen access .
GILearner materials are already starting to be used in teacher training programmes in the countries involved in the project.

Within the timeframe of reporting on the GI Learner project it has not been possible to evaluate the long-term impact on dissemination to Ministries of Education. However, the development and use of GI learning tools has been encouraged by the involvement of a GIS company ESRI in the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition, whereby they provide free access to their Cloud-based platform to many thousands of secondary schools across Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 410585 Eur

Project Coordinator

Sint-Lodewijkscollege & Country: BE

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID
• UNIVERSITEIT GENT
• The King’s School Ely
• Bundesoberstufenrealgymnasium Salzburg – Nonntal
• Liceul Teoretic “Dimitrie Cantemir” Iasi
• EUROGEO VZW