Abstract

For the Spring 2008 semester the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Geography Department developed a new 3-credit course entitled "Exploring the Virtual Earth". The goal of the course was to introduce students to neogeography tools such as Virtual Globes, Google SketchUp and Second Life, and demonstrating how these applications can be used to visualize geoscience datasets. The classes were a combination of lectures, demonstrations and practical exercises, with a particular emphasis on teaching students to author Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files. The assessment of grades included scores based on attendance, KML exercises, a SketchUp modeling project and exams. In addition, all students had to create and present a KML-based project, preferably using their own original geospatial data where available. Some of the more successful students even presented this work to the university community and invited guests at a one-day workshop "KML in the North". By AGU's Fall 2008 meeting, the course will have be taught again, with a syllabus that has been refined based on feedback from students in the Spring. We present the positive and negative lessons learnt, and other insights garnered from a year of teaching this original and unique course.