Tag: curriculum
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Engaging new GIS students with web mapping
Simultaneously published at V1 Magazine with thanks to Matt Ball, co-founder and editor, Vector1 Media. Not that long ago, I considered “web mapping” an advanced topic, best left to be taught in a senior GIS course. While that can still be the case, depending on how it is defined, the fact is that creating a map of…
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Taking an inventory of my teaching material
I have tried many times, in many ways, to create a well-organized and complete inventory of all my teaching material, and so far it has always eluded me. I want to have one document where I can track all of my lecture topics, concepts, skills, tools, readings, and assignments. I’m not talking about all of…
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How do we reach and teach casual GIS users?
Simultaneously published at V1 Magazine with thanks to Matt Ball, co-founder and editor, Vector1 Media. There are many people who don’t consider themselves geospatial professionals, but instead are casual GIS users. They probably don’t go to GIS conferences, or keep up with everything that’s happening in the field, and yet I’ll bet they perform a…
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Should programming be part of a university GIS curriculum?
In my last post, on GIS training vs. education at university, I referred to a paper by Fagin and Wikle (2011) who had conducted a survey of GIS instructors in the U.S. regarding perceptions of the importance of various GIS subject areas. One finding that I thought deserved its own post was that “Most respondants…
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GIS training vs. education at university
Many undergraduate university students take GIS courses with the expectation that these courses will increase their chances of finding gainful employment upon graduation. While I believe that the GIS courses I teach can help students develop marketable skills, I think that there are sometimes differing opinions between instructor and student about what students should learn,…
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My annual GIS curriculum review
Every summer, I perform a self-imposed curriculum review of the five GIS courses I teach each year. I think about the topics included and their sequence, and which course they belong in. I make notes to myself throughout the year about what topics need work, what examples worked well or fell flat, or what new…
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Group learning in a GIS capstone course
One of the courses I’m teaching this term is a senior GIS capstone course, with the simple title GIS Research Project. Students in this course are wonderful to work with. They have all taken at least three prior GIS courses, and often cartography and remote sensing courses as well. Of the approximately 160 students that…
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Searching for the perfect GIS textbook
If you’re reading this, chances are you are a fellow geonerd, and may have a shelf of GIS books that you have collected over the years (or maybe that’s just me). One of the great perks of my job is that, from time to time, I get free GIS textbooks sent to me from publishers…
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Testing practical GIS skills
This morning, students in my intermediate GIS course wrote their midterm test. While they were writing, I started thinking about the evaluation process and wondering about ways I could improve it. In my three lecture-oriented undergraduate courses, students are evaluated using a midterm test, a final exam, and a series of lab assignments. My traditional…
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Model GIS Curricula
I thought I would follow up yesterday’s post on ESRI technical certification and my GIS curriculum with a discussion of the UCGIS Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge project. I don’t think that ESRI is in any way intending their certification program to be a model curriculum for the entire field of GIS, but it got me…