Developing and Evaluating Simplified Tools for Image Processing in a Problem-Based Learning Environment for Earth Observation

Abstract

Earth observation is an interdisciplinary field of application. This makes it ideal for supporting natural science education in schools. Understanding satellite data can enable students to see more than just “beautiful images”. They can gain insights into an exciting field of application of many natural- and computer science fundamentals. In recent years, interactive lessons have been produced by our working group. They address the prospects and challenges connected with the teaching of earth observation topics in schools. The principles upon which the lessons are built promote a problem-based style of learning combined with a low impact in extraneous cognitive load for the students. Advances in web technology have made it necessary for interactive lessons to be redesigned and rethought. Contemporary web technologies have been selected and combined into an application framework to fulfill the requirements of our design principles and put a greater emphasis on usability during the content creation process. To allow offline usage of the learning modules it was tested whether this can be achieved using strictly client-side image processing. This article shows that, based on the technology stack used, lessons can be created that enable pupils to analyze remote sensing data in a much-simplified way. Using those simplified methods, a classification with an overall accuracy of 78.66% was achieved. The comparison of another simplified classification using just threshold values resulted in up to 89% probability to predict the outcome of a professionally produced dataset, making the simplified methods applicable in real-world examples presented in problem-based teaching scenarios.

Climate Change Education through Earth Observation: An Approach for EO Newcomers in Schools

“…Nevertheless, there is more to be done in the future, for CCSE or STEM education to capitalize on EO. In [16,17], authors have concluded that one of the largest concerns for the applicability of EO in schools is the content and how the materials can be adapted to the school curricula. Given that teachers are regarding EO as highly specialized and of a technical nature [18] and feel like they are stepping into uncharted territory, paying extra attention to how coherently the pedagogical content is presented should be regarded as a top priority.…”

“…They enable non-expert users to explore and analyze different satellite images, apply various visualization and analysis tools, create custom image composites, and thus unlock the power of EO towards a greater environmental understanding. Such tools could potentially help overcome past hardware, support, or training necessities and thus encourage teachers to incorporate EO in their teaching if appropriate learning materials are made available [17].…”

“…Due to its inherit interdisciplinary nature, Earth Observation (EO) is widely recognized as one such powerful approach that can benefit climate change education, besides advancing students' technical and scientific literacy and skills [11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. EO data can help today's learners and tomorrow's citizens build a sustainable future and a resilient society, as it delivers unique insights of numerous environmental processes with a high degree of vividness through its open, consistent, verifiable, and granular data to anyone, anywhere in the world.…”

“…Erasmus+ projects such as EO4Edu [21] and GIS4Schools [22] that exploit EO in order to address the impacts of climate change; • Columbus Eye project by the universities of Bochum and Bonn, which brings the ISS closer to teachers and students through live and archived images and smart-phone Artificial Intelligence Applications [23,24]; • Geo:spektiv, an e-learning platform that promotes the integration of EO into the school curricula through environmental-and space-relevant topics [14] However, exploitation of EO in European schools is still limited mainly due to technical, motivational, or informational barriers alongside significant language barriers as most learning materials and applications are usually available in a limited number of languages [15,16,18,27,28]. For compulsory education to capitalize on EO, teachers need suitable preconditions, i.e., user-friendliness, reduced-complexity, and intuitive EO-based applications and learning materials, that require minimum-to-no training, minimum IT infrastructure requirements, and little lesson preparation time alongside a pedagogical content with curricular relevance that is based on real-life scenarios and well-established teaching and learning approaches [17,18,28,29].…”