GISS and GISP Facilitate Higher Education and Cooperative Learning Design

What Does “Design” Mean?

This article concentrates on the “design of procedures”, more specifically on the design of learning procedures, pertaining either to (1) societal or to (2) individual learning.

Learning design or course design, in this sense, suitably triggers social procedures in the group of learners that optimally induce them to actually change their real-world behavior – which is ultimately the objective of any learning activity. Learning design hence means the design of procedural social rules for learners; it means also “rule design.”

What Could be “Education”?

In an idealist sense, education management and pedagogy could mean designing the framework conditions for personal development in such a way that a human being feels encouraged to effectively walk his or her own path to develop his or her own potential. Education and pedagogy can mean gardening, i.e. integratively caring for growth processes.

Online pedagogy, in this sense, opens the pathway for learners to (1) retrieve sufficient information, sufficiently well organized to function as travelling supply and to (2) be guided sufficiently well on a path to solve one’s own real-life problems without compromising the development of one’s own orientational responsibility. The notion of “self-adaptive learning” (Atif et al., 2003) describes such an equilibrium between self-regulation and outside regulation in learners.

What Roles do “GIS” Play?

This abbreviation’s usual meaning is “Geographic Information Sciences and Systems” (GIS^S), but for the sake of this paper, a second meaning will be introduced later: “Graphical Information on Social Procedures” (GIS^P). This duplication takes account of the dual space of places and the space of flows as conceptualized by Manuel Castells (2001, cf. Ahamer & Strobl, 2010: 13).

The Objective: Sustainability in Education and Practice

The ultimate goal of this paper is to support the design of (Web-supported) education in such a way that it produces sustainable, i.e. reliable, long-lasting, equilibrated, and consensus-based abilities & actions in learners. The objective of sustainability comprises not only (1) ecological, but also (2) economic and (3) social durability of values and hence protection of human resource investments.