This was a one-year pilot project funded by the National Science Foundation, which consisted of the development of web-based multimedia modules to teach Civil Engineering students about Geographic Information Systems (GIS) within the context of "real life� engineering problems. The project included a series of iterative usability assessments, which informed design and development, and an applied assessment of the pilot system within the context of a Civil Engineering course, which found that students who used the system scored significantly higher on test items associated with the target content, than those in a control section of the course.

References

• Hall, R.H., Luna, R., Hilgers, M.G., Sullivan, J.M., Lawrence, W.T., & Buechler, M.R. (2005). Evaluation of a Prototype GIS Learning System to Teach Civil Engineering Concepts.Proceedings of the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia, & Telecommunications, 3569-3574.
• Luna, R., Lawrence, W.T., Sullivan, J.M., Hall, R.H., Hilger, M.G., & Buechler, M.R. (2005). Development of a Learning System to Introduce GIS to Civil Engineers.Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, 1737-1738.
• Sullivan, J.M. ( 2004) Iterative Usability Testing in the Development of a Learning Technology System for Teaching Geographic Information Systems within a Civil Engineering Curriculum, Masters Thesis, Information Science and Technology, Missouri University of Science and Technology, http://campus.mst.edu/lite/theses/2004_2_Sullivan_John.pdf.
• Sullivan, J.M., Hall, R.H., Hilgers, M.G., Luna, R., Lawrence, W.T., & Buechler, M.R. (2005). Iterative Usability Evaluation Methods Applied to Learning Technology Development.Proceedings of the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia, & Telecommunications, 1188 - 1193.
• Sullivan, J.M., R.H. Hall, R. Luna, M.G. Hilgers, A.J. Taylor, and M.R. Buechler,Degree of scaffolding as learning object metadata: A prototype learning system design for integrating GIS into a civil engineering curriculum.Learning Technology, 2004.6(2): p. 60 - 64.