Sustainability of E-learning projects - the GITTA approach

GITTA (Geographic Information Technology Training Alliance) is an e-learning project that tries to complement the traditional way of teaching, preferably in a blended learning mode. To students it provides the possibility of extending and recapitulating knowledge taught in class. Originally a consortium of ten Swiss partner institutes created the GITTA lesson pool with every partner agreeing to contribute and utilise e-learning content. Since the original content development is now completed the recently founded GITTA Association tries to find partners outside the initial consortium to establish cooperations, which is considered as an important element of a strategy to ensure the further development and sustainability of the GITTA knowledge pool. GITTA offers a great opportunity for being integrated into GIScience curricula in manifold ways. In order to ensure its sustainability beyond the completion of the initial funding, the project is based on four strategic elements that are meant to facilitate the long-term existence of the project: First, GITTA offers one of the most comprehensive pools of GIScience e-learning content currently available (pedagogical strategy). Second, the GITTA lessons and case studies are provided as free and open content through the Creative Commons licence (open content strategy). Third, all GITTA content is based on an XML dialect named eLML (e-Learning Markup Language), providing standardised and flexible transformation into different output formats and/or presentation designs (XML technology strategy). Fourth, the GITTA Association is supposed to maintain the further development of the project, to acquire new members and continue the operation of GITTA (outreach strategy). Through these strategic elements we hope to attract many other users, as we believe that having a large community will help others in GIScience education and help us keeping our project alive and self-supporting.