Achievement

Professor David Bennett, in consultation with Professors Armstrong and Stewart, developed an introductory graduate course in geoinformatics (44:297 Special Topics: Introduction to Geoinformatics) for inclusion in the GEEMaP curriculum. The objective of this course was to help GEEMaP and other graduate students at the University of Iowa develop a baseline understanding of the concepts, theories, and methods of geoinformatics. The class was first offered in the Fall of 2010 and enrolled seven students. These students possessed a wide range of experience with geoinformatics related technologies, which made meeting the needs and expectations of all students challenging. To help address this challenge the class was based heavily on the "scale-up" model of teaching (http://scaleup.ncsu.edu/, locally known as TILE, http://its.uiowa.edu/instruction/tile/ ), which encourages active, engage learning and team-based problem solving.