PIXELS: HOW CLASSROOM-BASED AND FIELD-BASED LEARNING IMPACT STUDENTS’ SENSE OF SCALE AND UNDERSTANDING OF REMOTE SENSING IMAGERY

Scale is critical in the geosciences, and is particularly important in understanding and interpreting remotely sensed imagery. Sense of scale, referring to how an individual quantifies space, is thought to develop through kinesthetic experiences. Thus field-based learning may be important for helping students develop their sense of scale. Yet often fieldwork is neither feasible nor economical. So can a classroom activity that mimics fieldwork also contribute to students’ sense of scale? And does sense of scale relate to student understanding of key remote sensing concepts?

We address these questions in this continuing study, in which we compare student performance in a field-based and classroom-based remote sensing activity on two measures: 1) a sense of scale instrument, and 2) a closed-response remote sensing concepts questionnaire. Items on the remote sensing questionnaire were developed from open-ended student responses. Students at the Juneau Icefield Research Program (n=7) completed a 3-hour activity in which they skied the perimeter of a 1 m square (representing a WorldView sensor’s pixel), a 30 m square (a Landsat pixel) and a 500 m square (a MODIS pixel). Students (n=19) in a geoscience education class at California State University Fullerton interrogated field radiometry data in a GIS representation of the same three types of pixels, using imagery from the Juneau Icefield.

In both settings, students underestimate the size of large objects and overestimate the size of small objects. As predicted by the research literature, students are most accurate with sizes of everyday objects, though many struggle with the metric system. Although students gained an understanding of how large a pixel is and what data it contains, they continue to struggle with understanding the variability of data contained within a pixel. Continuing analysis will compare student performance between the field-based and classroom-based activities.