Geotechnical virtual seminars
Virtual Seminiars are the latest in modern Technology. Find out how they are altering the very nature of the way people learn and do business.
A virtual seminar is simply put an educational seminar that is held outside of a traditioinal classroom setting. As such it can be an useful instructional tool for teaching students who are at great distances from their teacher(s). Unlike conventional classroom teaching, a virtual seminar requires the implementation of what are now considered to be "emerging technologies" for education (Wright et al., 1997): the Internet or Internet 2, intranets, Web conferencing software, video conferencing via television (e.g., PictureTel?), real- time video over the Internet (e.g., CuSeeMe? or Vxtreme?), or multi-media CD-ROMs. Cyberspace has become the most popular venue. A virtual seminar is useful for both individualized instruction, in which the participant is both learner and mentor, and group instruction, where an administrator controls the technical and logistical details of the seminar and disposes barriers between learners and teachers (Nelson, 1997). Not only does it create an electronic learning community of sorts but experience has shown that the circulation of time- sensitive information is more efficient via a virtual seminar, as well as for technology transfer because of the one-to-many mentoring that helps participants solve dificulties as they happen
"Distance learning" has now become a familiar term on university campuses across the nation. Many corporations and associations, to help meet the challenges of the information explosion in industry, are also implamenting it (e.g., the American Society of Association Executives). The unlimited potential of one line and distance learning, defined by Nelson (1997) as that which "makes learning independent of time and place and available throughout a learner’s lifetime", is certainly not lost on the GIS community. As the clamor for exercising and education in GIS grows louder so to will the demand for useful modes of instructional delivery to users, no matter what time, place, or, in some cases, educational background. Instructors in GIS are also beginning to understand what is one of a kind about teaching GIS: the technological orientation of the subject, the head- spinning evolution of that technology, the need for collaboration not only for creative innovation in the classroom but merely to keep up (not faced by teachers in fields such as English where the fundamentals of Shakespeare and other subjects are firmly rooted), and the realization that many institutions of higher learning are not yet equipped to support these instructional requirements (Kemp, 1998). The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) has long been concerned with these issues, as well as with the broader expansion and improvement of GIS education and the crucial role that research institutions must play in the community of GIS educators (Kemp and Wright, 1997). One of the "action items" finalized in late 1997 by the UCGIS Education Committee was the reconvening of a "virtual seminar" in geographic information science. UCGIS, by virtue of its research focus on both theoretical and applied GIS and related technologies, is well placed to play a major role in testing and advancing new educational technologies