Surveyors´Curricula – The Contents of VA

Kirsi Virrantaus

Helsinki University of Technology

Chair of Commission 2

Problem of finding the best and most suitable curriculum

several universities develope VA and other e-learning applications

they want to open their university for global market, get new students/clients

from the clients´ point of view the problem is : ”how to find the best curriculum, either in virtual or real university?” – ”how to compare different curricula?”

FIG has the SEDBSurveying Educational Database

more than 400 educational programsa real database accessible in Internetdescriptive and statistical data on universitiesuniversities have pw:s to update their datadesign is good and user interface is easyformalized queries can be made links to academic memebers are provided

However some problems exist(did you try SEDB ?) www.fig.net

the use of the SEDB reveals the shortcomings the database is not up-to-date a lot of information is missing the motivation of the user is decreasing immediately when

he/she realizes that information can not be relied on

universities do not update their datathe data contents does not reach the needs of the users – they require other informationdatabase is not the correct way of describing VA !

Students and teachers need information on curricula

who are actually the users of SEDB? 1. STUDENTS who search for a university in

which they can spend a year they need to know the profile of the subjects taught they need to know in which topics the university has

advanced programs 2. TEACHERS who want to get references

when they develope their own educational contents

they need detailed descriptions of courses

A quick analysis on the users´ requirements

LEVEL 1: general contact information is rquiredLEVEL 2: profiles on specializations and information on special strengths are requiredLEVEL 3: detailed information on course contents are requiredLEVEL 4: approaches to VA applications !

How SEDB could be developed, what else could be established

in the SEDB there is a lot of informationuniversities would offer more informationthe SEDB should be redesigned in a way that the data contents would be easily updated the profile of each university could be easily

outlined the detailed information on courses and other

educational principles could be easily achieved theVA applications could be visited !

Levels of information provided and the possible solution

1. LEVEL: contact/general info; SEDB 2. LEVEL: showing the the main topics education - profiling each university according to these main topics; GUI to SEDB3. LEVEL: giving detailed information of courses; via home pages of universities4. LEVEL: providing access to VA; via home pages of universities, maybe via home page of COM 2 if coordination can be provided !!!

What we need for the practical implementations ?

suitable taxonomy of surveyors´ educational topics

active universities reflecting their educational programs to the model

updating procedures for the SEDB

a good user interface for the application

Taxonomies – selections of main educational topics

several approaches to surveyors´ curricula contents exist – some examples Allan´s report Scandinavian/European (CLGE meeting,

presentation by Hans Mattsson) Latin American (presentation by Pedro Cavero) Asian (presentation by Liu Yanfang, PR China) US (presentation by Jud Rouch) Polish (presentation by Adamek and Kaminski)

Subjects in Allan´s report, (first made during the mid 90´s, now updated)

measurements

maps and GIS

law

planning and development

valuation

economic and real estate management

construction and cost control

Subjects in North American approach (combined from old and new, Rouch)

mathematics and science

photogrammetry

geodesy

land information systems

humanities and social science

Subjects in Latin American approach (Cavero)

basic

technology

land administration

property

economy

law

humanities

Subjects in the Polish approach (Adamek and Kaminski)

Geodesy, Astronomy, Geodetic Systems, trigonometry, Satellite GeodesyEngineering Surveying, Urban Land Systems, Surveyingb in Forestry and AgricultureUnderground and mining surveyingCadastre, LIS, Law, EconomyCartography, Photogrammetry, RS, TopographyMathematics, Physics, Geometry

Soil Sciences, Ecology, Environment. Sciences. Methodology in Geosciences

Surveying data processing, Computer sciences

Sociology, Languages, Sport

What to do with the different approaches

after having a collection of taxonomies we can make both an intersection and a union of them an intersection means the ”core” subjects which

are represented in all curricula a union means a collection of all possible topics

represented in any curricula

The core curriculum is not possible

in CLGE work it was found that surveyors´ curricula even in Europe are so different that the core curricula is impossible to create

if the widen the approach to the entire world the task is even more difficult

The collection of all topics

produces a long list of all kinds of topics without any preferences

can represent much more than only surveying field

needs generalization, organization and processing

Processing the list of subjects

1. we list all possible fields of science and practise which are represented in any surveyors´ curricula in the world

2. all universities are asked to make their profile according to the ”map of subjects” – to pick out from the list the subjects they represent

3. universities can be then characterized according to the balance between different subjects and main fields of interest

Examples

a university can be IT oriented having a lot of GIS courses and a

strong co-operation with IT departments remote sensing oriented economy orineted with a lot of real estate

economy courses and a link to university of economics

traditional – having all sectors in balance

In Mattssons report for CLGE

he found in Europe at least three different models: the German model the Swedish-Danish model the Finnish-UK model

differences between these models were in the balance between some main topics

The three-part-model

also in the CLGE work professor Enemark introduced the so-called three-part-model surveying and measurement land management geoinformation management

this three-part-model, if accepted could be one filter for our approach

also others: today professor Psarianos gave a set of different definitions of surveyors profiles !!!

How this can be implemented?

LEVEL 1: contact information and general data maybe

statistics implementation by getting SEDB up-to-date

LEVEL 2: profile of educational program implementation by characterizing educational

programs according to the 3PM/or other

LEVEL 3: detailed information on curricula courses implementation via the home pages of

academic members perhaps some process could be defined

according to which also this information could be filtered into presentations, perhaps graphical ”map of curriculum”

LEVEL 4: access to Virtual Academies and other e –Learning applications via the home pages of universities via SEDB or COM 2 homepage COM 2 tries to collect information on qualified

applications and introdude them to FIG

Portal on Surveyors´ Education

the goal could be to develope a Portal on surveyors´ education

inlcluding access to Virtual Academies materials SEDB web sites of universities

We should discuss

what we can do before Washington

what should be done after Washington

how WG 2 Virtual Academy and WG 3 Surveyors´ Curricula should co-operate