This unit was reviewed by Alan Jenkins, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.

This unit is part of the NCGIA Core Curriculum in Geographic Information Science. These materials may be used for study, research, and education, but please credit the author, David J. Unwin and the project, NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIScience.  All commercial rights reserved.  Copyright 1997 by David J.Unwin

Your comments on these materials are welcome. A link to an evaluation form is provided at the end of this document.

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Unit Topics and learning outcomes

• This unit outlines:
• What is meant by the term curriculum and how it differs from a syllabus
• Various curriculum design methodologies
• The problems that GIS can create for curriculum design.
• Educational motivations for using the laboratory method in teaching GIS
• Problems in establishing GIS laboratories

Intended Learning Outcomes

• after completing this module, students should be able to:
• define a curriculum as a system of inter-related parts
• state why designing a curriculum solely by content is not always best practice
• outline some formal approaches to curriculum design
• list some of the problems to curriculum design posed by GIS
• design a GIS curriculum for you and your students
• justify the use of the laboratory class in a GIS curriculum
• relate this use to the overall aims and objectives of the curriculum in which it is embedded
• list and evaluate some of the published laboratory resources for teaching about and with GIS
• outline the problems that will emerge in setting up a GIS laboratory and the necessary resources to overcome them

Instructor's Notes

Table of Contents

Metadata and Revision History

1. Introduction - the laboratory class

• Some form of 'hands on' work is a feature of most GIS curricula.  In the US, such work is often referred to as a laboratory class whereas in the UK, it will usually be called a practical.  The essential idea behind a laboratory class is that, rather than being taught, students teach themselves and each other.

• GIS is often seen as a technical, practical subject so that aims and objectives or intended leaning outcomes will specify some form of laboratory work.

• In no other area of instruction is it as important to match what is done with the intended learning outcomes as if it is for laboratory classes.

• Laboratory classes are expensive to establish so it is important to 'make them count'.

• Nowadays we tend to think of the laboratory class as a necessary feature of most higher education, but it has not always been so. The book by David Boud and others (Boud et al., 1986) makes it very clear that the laboratory class as we now know it was only introduced into Universities in UK towards the end of the nineteenth century. The objective was not to learn practical skills as such but was to help students learn scientific theory by repeating some of the classic experiments of science. It was thought that by 'looking over the shoulders of the great scientists' knowledge and comprehension would be improved, as in the Chinese proverb:

• During the twentieth century additional motivations for laboratory work have been added:
• The acquisition of direct skills. In GIS these might be using a digitiser or scanner, importing data into a system, georegistering different data sets, data base searching, executing an analytical strategy and so on. At an advanced level it might also include learning to program using either a system macro-language or a standard high level programming language such as C++.
• Gaining familiarity with equipment and software. In GIS this will involve learning the specific commands or interface to a system.
• Using the laboratory class as a training ground for independent enquiry by students in which the theory is applied to new situations. In GIS this will involve using a system to solve a real problem.
• Learning to record, evaluate and report results. This will introduce project management skills.
• Often laboratory work is undertaken in groups, so that the acquisition of group work skills is an added motivation.

• There are several problems in laboratory work in GIS:
• An inability to 'see the wood for trees'. In overcoming what can often be very difficult practical problems we lose sight of the intended learning outcomes.
•  The expenditure of a lot of effort for what at times can be seen to be marginal educational gain. This effort is counted in very long learning curves, both for teacher and taught, to become familiar with rapidly evolving and changing systems. Any direct systems knowledge acquired in class is likely to date very rapidly indeed.
• An understandable obsession with the tools used at the expense of the understandings gained along the way. This has been called the 'Gearfreak syndrome'.
• Much laboratory work using GIS can be very automatic (do this, then do that, ...).
• Because the contribution of the individual student is sometimes difficult to isolate, laboratory work is difficult to assess.
• Gold et al. (1970, pages 36-7) argue that the change from objectives which were to do with understanding theory to those which emphasise skills and training can be taken too far and that skills and techniques can be taught without the use of a laboratory possibly at much less cost.

2. Styles of Laboratory Work

• There is no one single model of a laboratory class. A variety of types of class can be recognised (Brown and Atkins, 1988, 99-100):
• Demonstrations, designed to illustrate theory taught in lectures or to display particular skills. These can be given by the instructor, by teaching assistants, or by the students themselves. In GIS there are a number of examples of system use from vendors, and from national and other mapping agencies. A very large number of these demonstrations are now available on WWW or on CD-ROM.
• Controlled Exercises. These are tightly controlled pieces of work that are wholly devised by the instructor that yield known results. In GIS, good examples are the series Getting Started in GIS (Langford, 1991) and the UNESCO Workbook materials developed by the IDRISI project.
• Structured Enquiries. These are 'lightly structured experiments which may require students to develop their own procedures and/or provide their own interpretations of the results' (Brown and Atkins, 1988, page 99). In GIS a structured enquiry might involve providing students with a data set and an objective but leaving the choice of procedure to them. This kind of laboratory class can often be produced by 'open ending' some aspect of the materials. By 'open ending' is meant giving students freedom to chose either the data set (see Unwin, 1980 for an example in statistical analysis), objectives or procedures.
• Open enquiries. These require students to identify a problem, formulate it clearly, develop appropriate procedures, interpret results and consider their implications. In GIS the complexity of any enquiry is likely to be such that this involves virtually the entire system development process. The approach is probably best suited to advanced work in groups.
• Research projects. A research project is one that is based on a long experiment, or series of experiments. Project topics might be selected by the students, instructors, or, possibly most appropriately in a GIS context, in collaboration with some local industry or authority. For example, in 1996 students following the Master's course in GIS at Nottingham University (England) worked for most of the year with representative of a local police authority to prototype a crime pattern analysis system using and evaluating different GIS system tools as they went along. The results were of use to the authority and the students gained a great deal of useful experience in project planning and management.

• As we move from demonstration to project, so there is a change in the amount of independent work that is expected of the student :

• There is also a change in the appropriateness of these various types of laboratory class to standard educational objectives:
• Demonstration: Good for knowledge and perhaps comprehension. Moderate for application and analysis. Poor for synthesis and evaluation.
• Exercise: Good for knowledge and comprehension. Moderate for application, analysis and synthesis. Poor for evaluation.
• Structured enquiry: Good for application, analysis. Moderate for knowledge, comprehension and synthesis. Poor for evaluation.
• Open enquiry: Good for application, analysis and synthesis. Moderate for comprehension and evaluation. Poor for knowledge
• Research project: Good for application, analysis synthesis and evaluation. Moderate for comprehension. Poor for knowledge.

• It is clearly sensible to match the laboratory class style to the intended outcome!

3. Types of GIS laboratory class

• Computer-free classes. If the aims and objectives/ intended learning outcomes are solely to do with knowledge and comprehension of theory, these can often be addressed by laboratory exercises that do not involve any 'hands on' computer work at all. examples include:

• Simple pencil and paper exercises using artificial data to illustrate concepts such as co-ordinate rotation and translation, converting a simple line map into a series of relational tables, map overlay and so on.
• Map interpretation and appreciation of the type often seen in 'old fashioned' texts in geography and cartography.
• Desk top GIS design studies
• Use of videos about GIS applications
• 'Field trips' to local GIS installations

These have the advantage of being relatively cheap to set up and highly focussed on the particularly concepts involved. They can also generate useful materials for student assessment.

• Learning about GIS in a computer environment. Much of (1) can be automated and/or supplemented by computer based learning (CBL) resources of one sort or another. Several multi-media GIS instruction systems have been developed such as the GIST tutor (Raper, 1992) and the GeoCube. Similarly, the (UK) Geodata Unit at Southampton University has produced a series of computer resources to provide illustrations of many standard GIS operations. The World Wide Web now contains numerous other examples of this type of material. Developing this type of CBL material is both difficult and costly and materials brought in from outside (or on WWW) may not be entirely suited to the curriculum, but as WWW develops, so it is inevitable that this type of resource will be used more and more. It is not easy to evaluate this type of laboratory class because often no tangible product is obtained that can be assessed.

• Using a GIS to teach GIS theory. There are many resources available to enable direct use of a GIS in teaching, including several vendor-produced workbooks (see WWW sites for current details). This is probably the most common approach in GIS laboratories. It has the advantage of linking theory to practical use of a system, most probably with 'real' data. The disadvantages are those of the extra effort involved in learning a system, the cost of provision of such a system and the costs of preparation of the related teaching materials. This type of laboratory class is often 'closed' offering little opportunity for students to do anything except issue the 'right' commands. Often data capture is ignored, yet in the real world this is often the most troublesome and expensive part of a GIS project. It may be that this type of class makes GIS use look too easy!

• Learning to do GIS in a project. If the intended learning outcomes involve student exposure to 'real' GIS use and the acquisition of skills in GIS use, then the best type of laboratory class is the extended project. In this, either singly or in groups, students work though the entire GIS project cycle from problem definition, data selection and acquisition, system establishment, analysis and reporting. This type of project can be set up with varying degrees of instructor input. The problem can be specified in advance, students can be provided with a choice of data, and it is even possible to offer a choice of proprietary system. A GIS project offers opportunities for work closely related to the real world and in groups where management skills become important. Such projects are very demanding of staff time and energy and should not be undertaken lightly or without some control on student access to staff. A device that has been used successfully in several classes is for the instructor to play the role of GIS consultant whose time is rationed by a notional funding allowance.

• Note that the skills needed as a teacher to set up a successful laboratory class are very different from those involved in lecturing. In addition they involve
• questioning, listening and responding
• giving instructions
• supervising the work of others
• teaching demonstrators, and
• helping technicians

4. Setting up the laboratory

• Setting up the physical laboratory facility to allow any type of GIS laboratory class will involve some major investment decisions.

• There is already a considerable literature on how to set up a GIS laboratory, including some useful case studies developed by the NCGIA.

• It is not easy to generalise, since local circumstances (budget, staff available) and needs (type and level of course, number of students, intended learning outcomes) vary enormously.

• In the early days GIS laboratories were very expensive to establish. Hardware and software costs have fallen dramatically, but 'liveware' has become more expensive and. increasingly, data acquisition costs can be significant.

• In an ideal world, the laboratory would exactly match the intended teaching, but this is only rarely possible:
• Laboratories must serve several courses, including possibly courses that are not about GIS at all.
• Most institutions will need to service several levels of GIS course. The environment needed for an introductory freshman course in GIS is unlikely to be the same as that needed for graduate school classes and research.
• Often, the provision has to be set within an external environment controlled by faculty or institutional rules relating to the purchase and maintenance of hardware and the delivery of software. The need for GIS to use very large volumes or data may well, for example, make use of a college wide server/client network difficult and lead to clashes between the institution and the GIS unit.
• Proprietary GIS systems offer different licensing arrangements and educational discounts that may strongly influence the decision as to which to use. In UK, for example, there is a single agreement that makes ARC/INFO available to all institutions in higher education at very low cost. In turn, use of this system might then influence decisions on hardware platforms needed, data formats and availability, associated instructional materials, and so on.

• A checklist of things to think about in setting up a GIS laboratory is:
• Space. Is a room of sufficient size available? Remember that in addition to the computers there is a need for space for digitisers, plotters and printers, paper and maps, as well as for workspace away from the machinery.
• The general environment. This is often neglected, but an important component of a successful GIS laboratory are the power supplies, tables and chairs, carpets, display boards, window blinds and so on. Most countries have a set of sometimes mandatory Health and Safety Regulations that specify how computers should be set up and run. Like any other laboratory, a GIS laboratory should be a pleasant place in which to work. Pay attention to issues of safety and security. How will students gain entry to the laboratory? When, and under what conditions?
• Networking. Whatever the technology to be used it will be necessary for all the machines to have good network access and this will be in place for a much longer time period than any specific set of machines. How will the network be served and how will disk storage be rationed and controlled?
• Hardware. Although this is what most people think hardest about, it can be argued that hardware purchase will be a minor part of the total costs. Compare, for example, the salary costs of the professors setting up and running the laboratory class with the cost of a PC or UNIX workstation! Nowadays, many GIS laboratories will be a mixture of PC and UNIX based machinery sharing the same network and transferring data between platforms as necessary. In costing any GIS facility it will be necessary to amortise the hardware costs. This involves making some guesses as to the effective lifetime of any equipment. Computers do not wear out in any conventional sense: they rapidly become obsolete and it is in the industry's interest to shorten this time as much as possible by new releases of operating systems and processors. For the kind of machinery needed for GIS, a 'half-life' of around three years seems appropriate!
• How many platforms? How long is a piece of string? There is very little evidence on how many platforms are needed in a GIUS laboratory and this to an extent depends on the types of class that are envisaged. For a supervised class, then it is possible to operate with two or three students working on each machine (but remember to provide space and chairs!), but for general project work then the ratio of students to machines can be somewhat higher. For what it is worth, a 1980 report on university computing in UK recommended a ratio of one workstation for every ten students but this has gradually been reduced to a strategic target of one for every four students.
• Software. It goes without saying that you will need at least one GIS system (see above), but do not forget any associated software that will be necessary both for teaching and research such as RDBMS, Office tools, WWW browser, image processing and so on. As with the hardware, so GIS software rapidly becomes out of date and similar comments apply. There is a (dated) review of GIS from an educational perspective by Fisher (1989).
• Liveware. All the evidence is that an efficient GIS laboratory, even one used solely for teaching, must be managed and supervised by full-time support staff. Although there is a temptation to do it yourself, it is NOT sensible for faculty to take on these responsibilities which will clash with other teaching and research activities. Not only do support staff have to be in place, they must also be trained and involved in the preparation of the classes they will be called on to supervise. In the longer term, some form of career path within the institution or department should be provided. It is probable that the single most difficult resource issue in setting up a GIS laboratory will be providing this support.

5. Good Luck!

• Nobody said it would be easy! But

• If you get them right, good laboratory classes will vastly enhance your GIS teaching.

6. Reference Materials

    6.1 Print References

• Beard, R. M. (1970) Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

• Bloom, B.S. (ed., 1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives I: Cognitive Domain, New York: David McKay.

• Boud, D., Dunn, J. & E. Hegarty-Hazel (1986) Teaching in Laboratories, London: SRHE/NFER Nelson.

• Brown, G. & M. Atkins (1988) Effective Teaching in Higher Education. London: Routledge.

• Chance, J. & A. Jenkins (1997) Curriculum Design in Geography. Cheltenham, England: Geography Discipline Network, Gloucester and Cheltenham College of Higher Education (see also http://chelt.ac.uk/gdn.)

• Chickering A.W. and E.F. Gamson (1987) Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, Racine, WI: Johnson Foundation.

• Coulson, M.R.C. & N.M. Waters (1992) Teaching the NCGIA curriculum in practice: assessment and evaluation. Cartographica, 28(3), 94 - 102.

• Douglas, D (1988) Hardball and softball in geographic information systems, The Operational Geographer, 6, 42-11.

• Fisher, P. F. (1989) Geographical information system software for university education and research. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 13, 69 - 78

• Gold, J.R et alia (1990) Teaching Geography in Higher Education: a Manual of Good Practice Oxford: Blackwell.

• Goodchild, M.F. (1985) Geographical information systems in undergraduate geography: a contemporary dilemma. Operational Geographer, 8, 34 - 38

• Goodchild, M.F. (1991) Just the facts, Political Geography Quarterly, 10, 192 - 193.

• Hall, G.B. & M.H. MacLennan (1990) Video support in teaching about geographic information systems: a review of six videotapes. International Journal of Geographic Information Systems, 4(1), 87 - 95.

• Jenkins, A. (1992) Through a model darkly: an educational postscript. Cartographica, 23(3), 103 - 108.

• Kemp, K.K. (1992) The NCGIA Core Curriculum evaluation program: a review and assessment. Cartographica, 28(3), 88 - 93.

• Kemp, K.K. and A.U. Frank (1996) Towards a concensus on a European GIS curriculum: the international postgraduate course on GIS. International Journal of GIS, 10(4), 477-497.

• Kemp, K.K. & Fiona M. Goodchild (1992) Evaluating a major innovation in Higher Education: the NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIS. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 16, 21- 36

• Kemp, K.K. & M.F. Goodchild (1992) Developing a curriculum in GIS: the NCGIA Core Curriculum project. Cartographica, 28(3), 39 - 54.

• Langford, M. (1991) Getting Started in GIS. Leicester: Midlands Regional Research Laboratory, booklet and disks.

• Nyerges, T.L. & N.R. Chrisman (1989) A framework for model curricula development in cartography and geographic information systems. Professional Geographer, 41, 283 - 293

• Openshaw, S. (1991) A view on the GIS crisis in geography, or, using GIS to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, Environment and Planning, Series A, 23, 621 - 628.

• Poiker, T.K. (1985) Geographic information systems in the geographic curriculum, Operational Geographer, 8, 38 - 41

• Raper, J. (1992) Using computer demonstrators and tutors in GIS teaching: lessons from the development of Geographical Information Systems Tutor, Cartographica, 28(3), 75 - 87

• Samet, H. (1989) The Design and Analysis of Spatial Data Structures. Reading, Ma.: Addison-Wesley.

• Taylor, P.J. (1990) GKS, Political Geography Quarterly, 9, 211 - 212.

• Thompson, D (1992) G.I.S. A view from the other (dark?) side: the perspective of an instructor of introductory geography courses at University level. Cartographica, 28(3), 55 - 64.

• Toppen, F.J. (1992) GIS education in the Netherlands: a bit of everything and everything about a bit? Cartographica, 28(3), 1 - 9.

• Unwin, D..J. (1980) Make your practicals open ended. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 4(2), 39-42.

• Unwin, D.J. et alia (1990) A syllabus for teaching geographical information systems. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, 4(4), 457 - 465

Educational resources to do with GIS are rapidly being made available to anyone who has access via WWW, and the URLs etc. are changing all the time. Good places to start a search for materials are

• The UK Computers in Teaching Initiative Centre for Geography, Geology and Meteorology site at http://www.geog.le.ac.uk/cti.

• The NCGIA site at http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu

• The site that at Edinburgh University in UK at http://www..geo.ed.ac.uk/home/gishome/html which list a very large number of GIS related sites.

• For educational issues in geography there is a good site, maintained by the Geography Discipline Network at http://chelt.ac.uk/gdn.

7. Review and Study Questions

1. Outline what is meant by the term 'curriculum' and list some possible approaches to curriculum design.
2. Most of the published GIS curricula are based on the specification of the content to be taught. Set down a case against this approach.
3. Why should designing a curriculum for GIS be particularly difficult?
4. Design and justify a GIS curriculum for any group of students with which you are familiar.
5. Why do GIS courses include laboratory classes?
6. Outline the problems that will emerge in setting up a GIS laboratory and the necessary resources to overcome them.

Evaluation

Citation

David J. Unwin, (1997) Curriculum Design for GIS, NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIScience, http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/giscc/units/u160/u160.html, posted January 15, 1998.