Promoting Teacher Adoption of GIS Using Teacher-Centered and Teacher-Friendly Design

Abstract

This article reports the results of a case study that employed user-centered design to develop training tutorials for helping middle school social studies teachers use Web-based GIS in their classrooms. This study placed teachers in the center of the design process in planning, designing, and developing the tutorials. This article describes how teacher input was used to develop the tutorials and their ratings of the final tutorials. It also reports how many teachers ultimately used the tutorials in their classrooms. In this study, 20 percent of the participants implemented Web-based GIS in their classrooms.

Keywords:

• GIS
• teacher training
• geography education
• Web-based learning
• secondary education

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jung Eun Hong

Jung Eun Hong is an assistant professor of geography in the Department of Geosciences at the University of West Georgia, Carrollton, Georgia, USA. She teaches introductory and advanced level GIS, with a research focus on GIS in K–12 and higher education.