Reflections of The Teaching
System of "Remote Sensing" Course Dong Yu Yang , Dong
Peng Keywords: Remote Sensing
Teaching SystemTaiYuan Technological University No.79 yingze west avenue, Taiyuan, China 030024 Abstract With the rapid development of Information Technology and spatial technology, especially the advent of future "Digital Earth" era, based upon cultivating applied person with ability on RS techniques, considering that the RS teaching materials presently used in higher academy is over-theoretic and its engineering extent is too small, we try on discussing the "Remote Sensing" curriculum teaching system, including RS teaching materials’ content, teaching link and practice from the point of view of engineering of RS techniques, and bringing forward a design for " Remote Sensing " curriculum teaching reform in colleges and universities. Introduction With the rapid development of information technology and spatial technology, especially the advent of future " Digital Earth " era, RS techniques' status in the building up of national economy and national defense becomes more and more important, and its applied range gets more and more wide. And yet RS techniques must walk out of scientific laboratory , become applied technology and bring its predominance into play. For the application in geo-science, the key of engineering of RS techniques lies in the information extract that must be qualitatively exact and reach enough quantitative precision, and the transforming of production into specified data format. To meet the demand of the development and application of, Cultivating applied person with ability is vital besides the essential work in aspects of fundamental theory, skill manipulation, operation specification and quality standard. Considering that the RS teaching materials presently used is over theoretic and its engineering extent is too small, we try on discussing the "Remote Sensing" curriculum teaching system, including RS teaching materials' content, teaching link and practice from the point of view of engineering, and bringing forward a design for " Remote Sensing " curriculum teaching reform in higher academy. Analysis for current teaching system and RS techniques development's demand for persons with ability Analysis for current teaching system The RS teaching materials currently used in higher academy was compiled on the basis that Photogrammetry only pays attention to utilize the image geometrical positioning information, in the context of beginning to use the spectrum information of images, identify all kinds of resource and environment objects and visual interpretation as a basic technique approach and the weak computer graphics and image processing, and in the era when Digital concepts was not put forward yet. At that time, RS techniques was at scientific experiment stage, its application to practical engineering went on in the exploring view, precision evaluation adopted statistical means, there was no general norms and specifications, and standard land object spectrum database was not established. Therefore, teaching goal is/aims to make students realize the fundamental position of RS, RS technique system, and land object spectrum in the RS information extracting and understand the possibility of RS’ application in resource, environment and anti-catastrophe fields, and introduce the technological process of RS technical application, the train of thought of visual interpretation and so on. This kind of teaching materials have been published for more than 20 years since the seventieth of this century and played a great role in Chinese higher education. Despite much modification or reform with the development of technology, these teaching materials is not still adaptive to technology development and its requirements for persons with ability. Analysis for RS techniques development's demand for persons with ability It is well known that today’ world will go into digital era. American government put forward the development strategy of " Digital Earth ", which has greatly promoted the development and application of RS techniques. The development of Geo-science applied technology-GIS.GPS and other associated techniques radically changed the technical approach and route of RS techniques’ popularizing. So cultivation goal and corresponding teaching system of colleges and universities also should take changes following this from the point of view of demand for persons with ability and engineering. First, the persons with ability cultivated must grasp RS fundamental theory, and be able to build the mathematical and physical the land object spectrum and RS information spectrum of studied object and design the interpretation means and technological process of RS images; secondly, they should be acquainted with the relationship between the land resolution and sensor resolution of studied object; thirdly they should be able to apply the techniques such as computer graphics and image processing and computer cartography proficiently, build the relation among RS , GIS, and GPS, and handle RS information exactly using modern techniques; at the same time, they also should possess the abilities of researching and drawing the corresponding technique specifications and give a suggestion to technology standard. However, the current syllabus have no such demand. Reflect on the contents of "RS" teaching materials The contents of " RS " teaching materials should include RS fundamental theory; composing, classification, performance indexes of the RS technology system and selective principles based on the observed object; acquisition, correction, error processing, and quality control methods and application items of RS data, and the basic requirements of information extracting for RS data; choosing and buying, querying, storing of RS data; establishing the database and managing regulations and the composing of market; the technology means and system of adjusting, transforming and classi-fying of computer graphics and image, technical control of RS application items and procedures, standards, specifications and quality guarantee system of its specific implementation; the fields of RS application and the requirements of characteristic; the combination and integration of RS, GIS, GPS, computer cartography, network communication and other modern technology. The fundamental theory of RS The purpose of this section is to help students master the physical basis of RS, know the sending, reflecting, radiating theory of electromagnetic waves, understand the theory of radiation transferring and the atmospheric effect on the electromagnetic waves' radiation transferring, learn to collect ground objects' spectrum and set up the mathematical and physical relations between the standard spectrum data and the RS information, and make clear the rules in setting and distinguishing the working wave band of remote sensor and the basis of pursuant spectrum band of electromagnetic waves. The technology system of RS This section should include the knowledge about aviation, aerospace, ground and variant RS wave bands, and make students learn about the relationship among all kinds of RS platforms, RS sensors, data transferring systems, data receiving systems, data pretreatment systems, image & graphic processing systems and database management systems and master the classi-fication and capability of different platforms and RS sensors and related system and learn to select the relevant technology system on the basis of the observed object. The acquiring of " RS " data This section should mainly solve how to record the electromagnetic waves that the ground objects reflect or send on the optical or magnetic medium, and make students learn about the performance, classification, and interrelation corresponding to electromagnetic spectrum's characteristic of all kinds of media, understand the principles deeply that RS can monitor objects, know the reason why different wave bands differently reflect the same object, master the method of analyzing the effected factors of RS data, learn geometry correction and spectrum correction of the RS data, avoid errors and make the processed RS data meet the basic demands of information extracting through quality control. The choosing and buying and querying of " RS " data To introduce the acquiring and marketing organization of Chinese aeronautic & aerospace RS data and the methods and rules of RS data management, make students choose and buy the satisfying RS data through technical market. Moreover, students should master the record format of all kinds of data, the means of discerning the data quality and the indices of data checking and accepting, and make clear the problems which should be considered when choosing and buying the relevant RS data on the basis of the undertook item. Computer graphic & image processing Since has become an important approach of RS information extraction, this section must be strengthened. However, based on the regulations of relevant curricula in colleges, this section can't be replaced with the specialized. Therefore, the problem of correction, conversion, and classi-fication of RS data through technique should be solved emphatically in RS teaching materials, and become the deepening of the specialized courses of computer graphic & image processing in application. The teaching should make students understand how to correct the RS data accurately, how to design the corresponding method of calculation, how to enhance the data, how to stress the extracted information, and how to grasp the significance of computer graphic & image processing deeply through processing the specific standard data. Technical control of applied items of " RS " This section should involve the control principals, methods, and economic results of all applied items in the whole process which include analysis for demand, technical design, the selection and of specifications and norms, the establishment of quality guarantee system, and the specific implementation. Students should learn to analyze the technical feasibility of specific items, make clear the problems, which can be solved by researching RS for specific items, and the preset precision so as to master better the application of RS in technical serving. Applied fields of " RS " Because Applied fields of " RS " are very wide, and can't be narrated overall, this section should be classified according to resource, environment, anti-catastrophe or all kinds of specialized RS, introduce the successful cases and typical items, and make students come into direct contact with the practical work. The integration of RS, GIS, GPS, computer cartography, and network communication Like section (Technical control of applied items of " RS "), this section can not be replaced by the curricula of GIS, GPS, computer cartography, and network communication. But this section should make students learn truly to integrate RS with these techniques. Therefore, these techniques' requirements for RS and the key problems of integration should be introduced to students, and students should learn to integrate RS with these techniques into a whole. Teaching link and practice of RS " RS " is a technology course that needs practice very much. The ideal result will not get if it is simply studied by teaching. The students will not master what the teacher teach and change it into the ability unless via the means such as practicing during the course break, teaching practice, visiting locale and technical practice. The experiment during course break The experiment during course break is a supplement for teaching in course. It should be scheduled during the course teaching .The students can carry out the contents that were learned in the courses themselves by experimenting. To " RS " courses, the teaching experiments are less arranged in some universities because these is a lack of equipment and the RS materials or the equipment get behind the society. The phenomena should end as soon as possible. Moreover, since RS is a new and developing subject and can't be replaced with the experiment of other curricula, though classroom hour is short, the demands of the RS curriculum should be met as soon as possible. The contents of RS experiments during the course break include: the testing of full and partial wave band ground object reflection spectrum of different types and different phase-time and the comparison of RS image density with ground object spectrum; visiting the satellite ground receiving station, manipulating the data processing system, knowing the RS technology system, transforming 1A data into 1B data, doing experiments of RS data pretreatment on the basis of orbital parameters of satellite and synchronous ground object spectrum data and geometrical positioning data of field control points; surveying the latitude and longitude of RS data and reading the annotation files of RS data and grasping the orbit number, scale, pixel resolution, the number of pixels; doing experiments of computer graphic & image processing and being familiar with the functions of certain processing system and doing experiments of visual interpretation of typical ground object; doing experiments of computer interpretation and so on. Teaching practice Teaching practice is a mean that does the practicing task according to the teaching classes or teaching teams in the concentrating time, combining the concrete engineering project or research task. It generally requires starting from technology design and completes the full process of the application of RS under the direction of the teacher, requiring putting in the compiled production, investigating report and classified picture at last. It needs the students know and practice the applied works of RS technology by themselves hard working. The science students less took part in this teaching link at past and the engineering students have had some experiences in the practicing of other courses. The penman advises that the practicing bases should be established in the representative area or the practices should be arranged for the students according to the general investigation of some nation's relating department in RS. The contents of concrete practices should be flexibly ascertained according to the students' major and the status of the nation and the market. Technique design Technique design is for the teaching practice when the students choose the subject and do the research in the graduate time .The students can combine the knowledge that was studied in the major courses and bring into play the wisdom of themselves. They can also bring forth the ability in the theory of RS, operating skills and the processing of data .The University comprehensively assesses the students by the graduate replying and confirm the academic ability of the students. Technical practice Technique practice is in the main form of visiting. It should organize the students visiting the ground receiving station of satellite, the computer data processing center of graphic and image, the proving ground for RS benchmark. It also should organize the students taking part in the academic discuss of RS, the academic session of RS and the practice application of RS. According to the status of the university, the good condition should be made for the students. So they can do the practice action of RS technology during the school time. The tag In the academic content of the Chinese higher education, " RS " is not independence major. The courses in RS are the fundamental technology courses of the earth science, resource and the environment science and the architecture engineering science. The courses in RS can not be much arranged as the compulsory courses because the limit of period. But many elective courses are arranged in the university. So the courses in RS should take advantage of this condition and be arranged as the elective courses as soon as possible. The teaching contents for the fundamental courses should be better adjusted during the compilation of teaching materials. The self-study condition should be offered for the students by writing some tips in the teaching materials. And the contents that are arranged as the elective courses can be taught, so the students will master the knowledge of RS technology in the university. |