Integrating Geomatics into High School Education

 
Session

Innovations in Education

Full Paper Review

No

Authors

Takalani Makhavhu, Chief directorate: National Geo-spatial Information, South Africa, TMakhavhu@ruraldevelopment.gov.za
Simon Hull, University of Cape Town, South Africa, simon.hull@uct.ac.za

Abstract

Background investigations have shown that the intake at academic Geomatics programmes is mainly challenged with lack of awareness of high school learners towards the Geomatics profession. This lack of awareness is caused by students not being exposed to the Geomatics industry, resulting in poor enrolment into university institutions that offer Geomatics programmes.

Lack of awareness toward the Geomatics programs was found to be a global challenge and numerous global attempts to try and resolve the problem have been made. The aim of this research was to integrate Geomatics into high school education (South African Curriculum) through developing Learning and Teaching Support Material (LTSM), which exposes both high school learners and teachers to the field Geomatics. The LTSM used high school mathematical concepts to relate to Geomatics concepts with the hope to increase the awareness of the Geomatics profession and convincing high school learners to consider Geomatics as a future choice of career.

School visits and open day demonstrations showed that high school students and teachers are not familiar with the Geomatics qualification, but once the students were introduced and exposed to the Geomatics profession they found it interesting and were willing to consider it as their future qualification. The pre-post assessment as a pilot study was conducted from one school indicating that the developed LTSM can be used as a platform to integrate Geomatics into high school education helping to expose high school learners to the Geomatics industry. Further studies were suggested before any concrete conclusions could be made.

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