From Grand Canyon to Yosemite: Lessons learned from the development and assessment of digital geoscience field trips for mobile smart devices

How geoscience apps are enhancing students' understanding of the geology of places such as Grand Canyon and Yosemite national parks

Evaluating complex digital resources

Squires (1999) discussed the gap between HCI (Human Computer Interaction) and the educational computing communities in their very different approaches to evaluating educational software. This paper revisits that issue in the context of evaluating digital resources, focusing on two approaches to evaluation: an HCI and an educational perspective. Squires and Preece's HCI evaluation model is a predictive model ‐ it helps teachers decide whether or not to use educational software ‐ whilst our own concern is in evaluating the use of learning technologies. It is suggested that in part the different approaches of the two communities relate to the different focus that each takes: in HCI the focus is typically on development and hence usability, whilst in education the concern is with the learner and teacher use

Assessment of Student Learning Using Augmented Reality Grand Canyon Field Trips for Mobile Smart Devices

In searching for ways to improve undergraduate success in introductory geoscience courses, the importance of experiential learning in engaging students has become clear—and in geoscience, that is encapsulated best by field trips. However, as general education class sizes increase, so do the cost, liability, and difficulty of running a field trip. A solution for economically and conveniently bringing kinesthetic field experiences to a broader audience lies in the integration of technology through mobile-device games, apps, and augmented reality (AR) field trips. We report here an examination of learning gains at five colleges after intervention with augmented reality field trips to Grand Canyon. The AR field trips cover three topics taught in introductory geoscience courses: geologic time, geologic structures, and hydrologic processes. Results involving nearly 1000 students show that overall gains are similar to control groups, with completion of the AR field trips being a predictor of student learning success in some cases. Prior interest in the geosciences, students’ base-level understanding of the material, and whether or not the student is a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) major are strong predictors of improvement in geoscience learning. Gender and ethnicity had no statistical impact on the results, suggesting the AR field trip modules have broad reach across student demographics. Because these modules have been shown elsewhere to increase student interest in learning the geosciences, we advocate their adoption, leading to increases in student learning

Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research

This paper reviews the published articles on eTourism in the past 20 years. Using a wide variety of sources, mainly in the tourism literature, this paper comprehensively reviews and analyzes prior studies in the context of Internet applications to Tourism. The paper also projects future developments in eTourism and demonstrates critical changes that will influence the tourism industry structure. A major contribution of this paper is its overview of the research and development efforts that have been endeavoured in the field, and the challenges that tourism researchers are, and will be, facing

The Current Perspectives, Theories and Practices of Mobile Learning

Mobile learning (m-learning) is a highly popular multidisciplinary study field around the world. It has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers in different disciplines who have realized the potential to apply mobile technologies to enchance learning. Thus, mobile learning has been defined differently by different people. This study is a review of m-learning literature for understanding and discussion of current perspectives and theories in mobile learning. Additionally, some m-learning practices that are implemented in different sectors such as corporate, university and military have been mentioned

EDUCATIONAL TOURISM IN THE TRAINING OF FUTURE TOURISM PROFESSIONALS

The concept of educational tour (field trip) and the importance and role of  educational tours in the training of future tourism professionals are explored and analysed in the paper. The concept of educational tourism is formulated and the types of field trips are identified in the result of the research. A sociological survey with the aim to find out opinions of tourism students on the necessity, preferable types, and duration of field trips was conducted as well.Research methods: the logical construction method, scientific induction, synthesis, the monographic method, methods of quantitative and qualitative analysis for processing the survey results

Crowdfunding and Museums:A Field Trip Exemplar in the United Kingdom

This article sketches a project designed for an undergraduate course dealing with social contexts of entrepreneurship. The learning activity asks students to devise a reward-based crowdfunding campaign for a museum. The project relies on a field trip to a museum where students gather a better understanding of fiscal and brand visibility challenges currently unsettling these types of organizations. The project draws on intra and extra classroom activities that integrate innovative trends in entrepreneurship teaching, bridging theory, and real-life applications. The exercise motivates students to design solutions, develop collaborations, and cocreate value processes with the organization and diverse actors. The activities span over a 4-week period with tasks prior, during, and after the museum field trip, culminating with a presentation of a crowdfunding campaign. The pedagogical value of this exercise relates to students cocreating entrepreneurial action with a client/entrepreneurial organization within a resource-constrained environment, which motivates the design of innovative crowdfunding campaigns and empathizes with the entrepreneurial demands placed on cultural organizations. Cultural, social, and creative problem-solving competencies for working in international and multidisciplinary teams around crowdfunding can be expected as outcomes. This exercise can be advantageous for courses dealing with the multifaceted dynamics of social contexts of entrepreneurship

SciTech News Volume 71, No. 2 (2017)

Columns and Reports From the Editor 3 Division News Science-Technology Division 5 Chemistry Division 8 Engineering Division 9 Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division 12 Architecture, Building Engineering, Construction and Design Section of the Engineering Division 14 Reviews Sci-Tech Book News Reviews 16 Advertisements IEEE

A semi-automatic 2D/3D annotation framework for the geometric analysis of heritage artefacts

International audienceDocumentation and monitoring of heritage objects involve many actors on multidisciplinary aspects. The progress made over the years in the field of digital technologies has enabled many tools for analysis, management and dissemination of information gathered around an object. These tools must allow users to semantically describe the object while allowing them to grasp its morphological complexity and the heterogeneity of the available analysis supports. This article introduces an approach for the semantic annotation of heritage objects by using the bijective relationship that can be established between a 3D representation of an object and the set of oriented images towards it, while maintaining a continuum of information between all phases of observation and description, from acquisition to visualization of semantically enriched representations. The main idea is to offer a versatile environment to help extraction of relevant information from images using geometric descriptors and semi-automatic point cloud processing methods