Defining a research agenda for geographical learning tasks with G-portal digital library

• Main Authors: HEDBERG, John, CHANG, Chew-Hung, LIM, Ee Peng, TEH, Tiong-Sa, SUN, Aixin, GOH, Dion Hoe-Lian, THENG, Yin-Leng
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2006
• Subjects: Databases and Information Systems; Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/993; http://repository.nie.edu.sg/jspui/handle/10497/2280
• Institution: Singapore Management University

For many years learning management systems have been focused on providing resources for students. More recently, the growth of digital repositories has provided resources that can be tagged and searched independently of a course structure. G-portal provides resources specifically tagged for geographical learning tasks and provides a project space in which students can collaborate, create resources and share these resources amongst themselves. This paper reviews the research issues surrounding G-portal using activity theory as a framework and defines a research agenda based on the capabilities of G-portal. In particular, issues of information organisation, issues of usability, search strategies and retrieval techniques, multimodality of representation, transduction of information and representation of geographic and spatial information will be examined. The research agenda focuses on three areas: information organisation and representation; the capabilities of the G-Portal application and its ability to integrate and retrieve information and geographical task; and the ease with which students are able to undertake and complete learning tasks about geographical phenomena.