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标题：Developing a distance education programming skills course for geo-information science and Earth observation students
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作者：I. Ivánová ; O. Huisman ; R.A. de By 等
期刊名称：ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
印刷版ISSN：2194-9042
电子版ISSN：2194-9050
出版年度：2010
卷号：XXXVIII Part 6
页码：62-67
出版社：Copernicus Publications
摘要：This paper describes the development of a distance education course on programming skills. The purpose of this course is twofold:first, it supports ITC’s Joint- Education Projects (JEPs) currently underway in several developing countries, and secondly, itbroadens the target market for our educational services. One of the key aims in teaching programming skills using any programminglanguage is to teach students how to approach computational problem-solving in a structured and logical way. The challenge in doingso is how to develop adequate learning resources on the programming fundamentals, which are both intuitive and functional.Drawing upon several years of experience of teaching programming skills at the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and EarthObservation of the University of Twente (ITC, The Netherlands), we designed a course based on an interactive learningenvironment, developed for a previous distance education course (Ivánová et al. 2008), but significantly extended to support newcontent. The programming language taught is Python, which is a general-purpose, open-source computer language well-suited foruse in the hybrid context of databases, Geographic Information Systems, image processing, and web applications. It is well-knownfor its lean syntax, which allows the novice student to devote more time to algorithmic and programming fundamentals. The courseis designed around an interactive learning infrastructure. It is built in an environment that seamlessly integrates the Pythonenvironment (= program scripting and command line) and the teaching environment (= lecture material, exercise environment, and atextbook). The course material is developed for plug-and-play deployment on a student’s PC, reducing the initial requirements oninstallation and optimization of the work environment. Although the nature of studying a programming language is intrinsically selfstudy,this plug-and-play solution also allows components of the course to be deployed in a face-to-face set-up, as well as in distanceeducation mode. This type of integrated learning environment currently does not exist anywhere; existing solutions are mostly in theform of isolated tutorials or books. From a didactic perspective, the course presented here is a system of self-instructional learningobjects, allowing students to proceed in their own location, in their own time, and at their own pace, with an extensive directfeedback embedded in the course materials. Most of the course content is based upon open-source materials – the textbook and someof the exercises. However, we are extending these materials to tailor the course better to geoinformation science students by addingmaterial (in the form of lessons, as well as adding a chapter to the book itself). By doing so, we release the new chapter into theopen-source realm through creative commons licensing.
关键词：Programming; courseware; Python; e-learning; open-source