Educating the next generation of geomatics professionals – A South African perspective

The lack of education research and innovation in Geomatics education programmes may imply doom for the traditional surveying professions in the next twenty years. ‘Teaching exactly as I was taught’ has been the traditional and remains the most applied manner of educating the next generation of Geomatics professionals. A professionally registered person with a higher qualification remains qualified to teach, assess and certify the next generation of Geomatics professionals, technologists and technicians. The teaching purpose originally directed at transfer of knowledge from the knower-to-the-learner through lectures, tutorials or practical and evaluating the extent of memorising that has occurred through examinations has changed. This paper presents results of the study to identify the modern purpose of teaching. This involves the transfer of knowledge from one person to the other through multiple pathways, originating from multiple sources and utilising “multiple intelligences” [1]. It discusses the teaching processes that contribute towards the growth of knowledge, improvement of knowledge, skills and competencies, using multiple sensory channels including hearing/listening, doing, reading, and participation, arguing and observing. The sources of the learning are also as diverse, and include social networks, publications, viewership and trial-and-error and each learner may prefer one or more of these channels [2]. Therefore, persons recognised in Geomatics categories must acknowledge that they cannot be specialists in all specialisations of the Geomatics profession. This entails that being a “jack of all trades” makes you a master of none. A “master of one discipline” is at most mediocre in all others. A meeting of masters of many disciplines are likely to make superior decisions on aspects linked to reality. This is the rationale of cooperative management as envisaged in the traditional African culture