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Content, Community, and Collaboration at ESRI Virtual Campus: A GIS Company's Perspective on Creating an Online Learning Resource

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03098260500030488

1466-1845

Ann Braden Johnson, Judy M. Boyd,

Geographic Information Systems Studies

Abstract GIS requires training to use it to its potential. In 1996, ESRI began exploring ways to expand its successful educational programmes to a worldwide audience via the Web. The ESRI Virtual Campus (VC) opened in July 1997. The paper discusses a few of the many lessons learned during the operation of VC, related to content, community and collaboration, and considers future prospects. The VC continues to evolve in the areas of component-based design, database publishing, community and collaborations. As new technologies become available and bandwidth increases, features that could not be imagined at its conception can now be developed. Keywords: GISGISciencevirtual campusdistance learning Notes 1 Institutions offering credits for VC courses in their programmes include Penn State World Campus, Pennsylvania State University, UNIGIS, University of California at Riverside, and University of Southern California. 2 Concepts (tell me), examples (show me), and exercises (let me do it). 3 Learners who get a score of 70 per cent or higher on a VC course exam receive recognition in the form of a Certificate of Completion from ESRI. 4 Institutions with a site licence for ESRI software receive free, unlimited access to all ESRI-authored, self-study courses at the VC (GIS technology courses); those with a lab kit (i.e. software licensed in single lab) receive 100 seats. 5 Extensible Markup Language. XML is a markup language not unlike HTML (HypertText Markup Language). With XML, custom tags can be created to describe structured content (e.g. educational components) and render them according to specifications stored in a schema. Processing the same content with a different schema produces different results (e.g. a document formatted for printing and a document formatted for the Web). 6 The VC offers a limited number of courses in German, Portuguese and Spanish.