1996 California GIS Educators' Symposium
Outcome and Action Items
Breakout Group Summaries
Group A
The focus of much of this group's discussion was on articulation between 2 and 4 year colleges and the premise that spatial literacy, spatial skills, spatial reasoning are important to success in GIS education. The discussion included the desire by some to move the above skills down into the freshman and sophomore years. Some ideas brought forward include:
Revise existing courses such as Intro to Map Reading to include GIS technologies.
Encourage the introduction of GIS into the regular course curriculum
Encourage the development of service GE courses in spatial thinking, etc.
Action Items:
Think globally act locally. Encourage 2 and 4 year schools in local areas, and
share the experiences in achieving those goals across the state.
Group B
Bring professional societies into the process. Do case studies of articulation success.
Get moving quickly. It will take a long time to do this anyway.
Not enough K-12 people at the symposium.
Comment from audience in response to group summary:
The drive to get this going is from the need of the industry. There is a preference for this to be done through geography departments. If geography doesn't do it though it will go into other departments.
Group C
GIS is offshoot of something else, called spatial literacy. We need to set standards for spatial literacy.
A circle divided three ways was presented: a. Standards for GIS education, b. Marketing GIS education courses, c. Demand for training. This demand comes from the continuing education community, industry and the vendors.
Comments from audience in response to group summary:
We need acceptance of the concept of spatial literacy.
We need a support system for people desiring to continue training.
We need to go after the state to establish this framework. Why not go through official channels.
This process exists to some extent, but we need very strong statements coming from groups like this to empower the state agencies to take action.
The idea is to start something from the local perspective in order to show that it can be done, in order to show the state the way. But we need to be doing both. Starting local programs, AND lobbying the state.
Geography people in the universities need to take charge of this, and we need statewide professional groups to promote this.
While we do need geographers to do this, it seems that the more disciplines wanting this, the likelier that there will be action. If it is only geographers, then it will be hard to do. What we really need is the support of education.
Maybe we need a coordinated way to go at this. A statewide resolution of organizations supporting the idea of spatial literacy.
1. Publish examples of local articulation agreements between four-year, two-year, and secondary level institutions.
The NCGIA Symposium Web site is available to house these example agreements. They may be mirrored to the CGIA Education page when it is developed.
2. In order to facilitate preparation for upper division GIS, it would be helpful to define the spatial learning components fundamental to GIS which could be taught in the lower division level and in the secondary schools. We need to present it as a need and demand which exists to which the state must react. We need to attempt to influence the flow of money for technology education toward GIS Education.
The group proposed drafting a white paper outlining the spatial learning concepts vital to GIS and suggesting ways in which the State of California and other organizations in the state could respond to support these GIS education issues in the universities, colleges, and schools of the state. A draft of this document will be prepared by the CGIA meeting (Date TBA, but probably sometime
between Feb and April).
Volunteers for a Task Force to prepare this document include:
The task force will be coordinated by Keith Clarke, University of
California Santa Barbara
3. Use the California Geographic Information Association annual meeting as a mechanism for disseminating and exchanging ideas.
The CGIA meeting (early 1997?) will serve as the follow up meeting for the Symposium. It can provide a venue for GIS Educators from various type of institutions to meet on an annual basis.
4. Promote GIS Education sessions and collegial interaction at other state meetings such as CalURISA, California Geographic Society, the Northern and Southern Geographic Alliance activities, and others.
5. Encourage industry, publishers, educational groups, and others to develop "Plug and Play" educational modules that can be made available on the web or as traveling modules.
May be able to piggy back on the GIS Core Curriculum development efforts at NCGIA, but more funding would be required to create these modules.
6. Improved mechanisms for sharing materials including:
No definitive action items were outlined for this recommendation, but some type of World Wide Web mechanism may be the best option for at least communicating the existence and availability of GIS educational materials developed by educators around the state. (NCGIA Symposium Web site?, CGIA Education Web Page?)