DialogPlus: digital libraries in support of innovative approaches to learning and teaching in geography

Summary form only given. DialogPlus is one of four international projects, supported in the US by the NSF International Collaborative Research Program in Digital Libraries, and in the UK by the Joint Information Systems Committee of the UK Higher Education Funding Councils. The two primary objectives of the project are to develop: a distributed enabling information infrastructure for the support of learning and teaching in geography; innovative approaches to teaching and learning, based on this infrastructure. Specifically, the project the undergraduate and postgraduate programs of study in geography in the consortium universities can be enriched and developed through cross-national collaboration and online delivery; different virtual learning environments can be supported by a common, open and distributed digital library infrastructure; major geospatial resources relevant for the study of the environment and landscape and for the study of human populations in cities and the countryside can be used in student programs of study; important skills in the analysis of spatial information through use of Geographical Information Science and Earth Observation software and functions can be taught online and made available in undergraduate programs.