DLESE description of The Virtual Geography Department

The Virtual Geography Department in an ongoing project that hopes to interlink geography department curricula both nationally and internationally using the Internet and World Wide Web. The goal of the Virtual Geography Department Project is to offer high quality curricular materials and classroom and laboratory modules that can be used across the Internet by geography students and faculty at any university in the world, and all the while, promote collaborative research. Stress is being placed on curriculum integration through the creation of on-line "electronic" texts and resource materials that will be of service to a wide range of departments. The project links existing materials on the Internet and has commissioned new materials to address topics not now represented. In this way, geographers at many universities can share the time and expense of developing hypermedia and multimedia curricular materials and benefit from the materials that might not otherwise be made available commercially. Specific curricula materials, classroom modules, and laboratory exercises that presently available are categorized by the following topics: cartography, earth's environment and society, geographic information systems/remote sensing/statistics, history and philosophy of geography, physical geography, urban and economic geography, virtual fieldtrips, and world regional geography and area studies. The site also provides links to geography departments throughout the world, links to geography-related online courses organized by subject, and links to online resources for geographers such as geography-related journals, professional organizations, and map collections.