Training Teachers to Use Remote Sensing: The YCHANGE Project

Özet

Many people use satellite images in their professional and everyday lives, and school curricula often require their use. Yet, the ways teachers actually use satellite images in the classroom is often limited, if they use them at all. The YCHANGE project partners created a remote sensing curriculum which suggests how teachers can develop their students’ skills in this area of geography. This curriculum is based on existing research and school curricula. The project partners created and published sample-learning units, and the project webpage offered the possibility for teachers to publish student-created projects. YCHANGE training event participants in Switzerland and Germany filled out an online survey. Most participants said they improved their ability to read satellite images and use them in the classroom. However, participants’ evaluation of the YCHANGE materials and training events was mixed. The study shows some differences among the Swiss language regions, and significant differences between Germany and Switzerland. For example, our training events introduced the participants to the web application BLIF. On average, the German participants liked BLIF, but the participants in Switzerland rated BLIF significantly worse. We therefore recommend that future research compare remote sensing, as well as other areas of geography education, among different countries and language regions. In the age of Big Data, people in many areas use satellite images and geographic information systems (GIS) (Dziob, Krupiński, Woźniak, & Gabryszewski, 2020). They are often available to anyone with a computer or a smartphone for free (e.g., Steiniger & Bocher, 2009; Wulder, Masek, Cohen, Loveland, & Woodcock, 2012). A family can use Google Earth and Google Maps to plan a day trip. A youth group can take part in a citizen science project using ArcGIS online. Professionals can use them to create a flood response plan with the help of QGIS. These are just three examples of the manifold ways in which people use satellite images and GIS. Besides free options such as Google Earth and QGIS, there are many paid options for obtaining and using remote sensing data and GIS. “The global market for remote sensing is expected to increase from $11.3 billion in 2018 to $18.9 billion in 2023 […]” (Sullivan, 2018). Moreover, the “2020 European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC) Industry Survey” showed that “average annual employment growth rates […were] approximately 6% from 2012 to 2018 and 17% in 2019. However, 80% of employers who took part in the survey noted difficulty finding and hiring candidates” (Dziob et al., 2020, p. 1).