UCGIS Education White Paper
Research-based GIScience Graduate Education
Revision History:
10 July 1997 - Post-Assembly Version 1.0
Introduction
To advance the state of science, research universities must educate researchers
and future research-capable educators. Educators at leading universities
must consciously lead the best young minds to the very frontiers of research
and then train and collaborate with those emerging researchers to push
those frontiers forward. Geographic Information Science is both a
new science (Information Science) and a more traditional discipline (Geography)
that has been given vast new opportunities to grow. The opportunities
have been made possible by advances in computer and information technology
and by the creation of valuable tools such as geographic information systems
for managing previously intractable quantities of spatial data. The
UCGIS has made a commitment in another education initiative to study those
emerging technologies and incorporate them into the education programs
at member universities.
This initiative goes beyond seeing and using what's out there.
This initiative goes beyond keeping abreast of technological advances and
then applying newer faster tools to familiar data-bound problems.
This initiative includes designing and creating new technology itself.
It includes helping define the direction that new technology will take.
It includes finding innovative, less obvious applications for the emerging
technology. It requires true interdisciplinary dialogue followed
by in-depth interdisciplinary research to define and meet the needs of
the individual disciplines and of the evolving joint disciplines that constitute
Geographic Information Science.
This initiative also identifies advanced areas of GIScience that have
been sufficiently codified and organized to be presentable as Ph.D. level
courses. These courses will lead graduate students to understand
the important unsolved problems of GIScience; and one of the key objectives
of these courses is to make research accessible to the graduate students.
Textbooks on advanced topics are also needed to promote the highest level
of research-based education that leads to further research.
Background
Geographic Information Systems are a rapidly changing product of a rapidly
advancing technology. As with most computer systems, GISystems were
initially only accessible to computer experts. Training in their
use required knowledge of computer architectures and operating systems.
With the evolution of user interfaces, open architectures, and user-transparent
distributed processing, GISystems have become increasingly accessible to
other scientists and even to the most inexperienced applications users.
GISystems grew in functional complexity at the same time that they became
easier to operate, providing ever more powerful tools to an ever expanding
audience of users. Geographic Information Science seeks to understand,
harness, focus and possibly redirect this technological revolution.
Geographic Information Science is a scientific discipline with fuzzy,
rapidly changing boundaries and still undetermined potential. A primary
objective of UCGIS is to define the boundaries and the boundary expansion
directions, thereby realizing the potential of GIScience. UCGIS will
accomplish this by identifying the areas in which UCGIS will encourage
investment of its research and educational resources. Technology
has often been the driving force in the development of an information science;
and technology has always been a limiting consideration. GIScience
must take charge of the development of its science; and one way to do that
is to formally spell out the educational elements of a research GIScientist's
Ph.D. training.
In their latest edition of Elements of Cartography, Morrison,
Robinson, et al., describe the knowledge and skill requirements
of a modern day cartographer to be part traditional cartographer, part
computer scientist, part social scientist, part behavioral scientist, part
mathematician, part communications specialist, which Morrison reiterates
in his 1993 C&GIS article. Their "jack-of-all-trades" description
of the working cartographer needs only to be extrapolated--more and better
and deeper--to give a "master-of-all-trades" description of the research
GIScientist.
Importance and National Benefits
Science is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary; and this causes some
concern by both the traditional disciplines and by the science oversight
groups. The National Science Foundation has recently acknowledged
the need to broaden the scope of research-based education to span important,
newly emerging, interdisciplinary research fields. At its inception
the UCGIS recognized that GIScience is one of those emerging multidisciplinary
fields; and the UCGIS made participation by more than one academic department
a condition for university membership in the organization. This foresight
has left the UCGIS poised to respond to the call
for new research-based graduate training programs issued by the NSF:
Given that research in GIScience is already an active ongoing activity
at the member institutions, why should the UCGIS single out a special education
priority on research-based education?
The UCGIS is composed of outstanding research universities whose mission
is not only to monitor, but also to advance emerging technologies as they
apply to Geographic Information Science. The UCGIS provides a unique forum
for sharing knowledge gained by individual research efforts involving advanced
technology. By examining, formalizing, and combining approaches to
research and to education that use new and innovate techniques, we expedite
the process of codifying GIScience. This sharing will lead to faster
technological evolution, as courses and textbooks promulgate solutions
to spatial and temporal problems. In this sense, the research-based education
priority facilitates the research goals of the UCGIS through education.
Indeed, research-based education should contribute to a more robust understanding
of where GIScience research is heading by showing clearly where it has
gone and what it has accomplished in the recent past.
Linkage to Other UCGIS Education Priorities
The importance of research-based graduate education is also interwoven
into the following UCGIS Education priorities, further underscoring its
relevance and scope:
-
Supporting infrastructure - science advances more rapidly with institutional
and outside support for research activities.
-
Emerging technologies - creating as well as exploiting technologies.
-
Professional Education - Research plays an important supporting
role for data, tools, and course content provided to the professional student.
-
Learning with GIS - Access to research-based instruction promotes
learning in all settings, thereby building the connections that cause out-of-the-classroom
experiences to contribute to in-the-classroom achievement. There needs
to be an assessment of how research can support (and equally important,
where it cannot provide) an environment conducive to the development
of spatial information skills.
-
Educational Policy - Research coupled with cutting edge education
can transform the way we learn and teach, if not the entire educational
framework. Bad research will not attract or keep the best graduate
students. Therefore, research plays an important role when establishing
educational policies.
National Needs
By realizing the potential of a research/education symbiosis, the UCGIS
has the power to promote a number of national needs as well:
-
Strengthening research in GIScience within and beyond existing programs
of higher education.
-
Promoting the development of additional interdisciplinary research programs
at UCGIS universities.
-
Improving commercial GIS software development by graduating more research-capable
GIS developers.
-
Accelerating the development of GIScience to give more and more people
access to spatial analytical tools.
-
Providing U.S. Ph.D.s with more competitive analytical skills for the national
and international marketplace.
-
Improving existing research method and developing new research methods
using GIScience.
-
Providing new and improved GIScience tools to support research in GIScience
and other disciplines.
IMMEDIATE ACTION ITEMS
(1) Compile a list of Ph.D. level courses and their content that lead
to discussion of key as-yet-unanswered research questions. Also compile
a cross-referenced listing of teachable topics that illuminate our previously
identified key research issues.
Strategies and Requirements to Meet This Goal:
-
Member universities should identify their current Ph.D. level advanced
courses and the content of those courses. Members should also identify
any limitations with current programs and also identify desired improvements
to the current curriculum that would benefit research-capable graduate
students.
-
Put together a wish list of Ph.D. level advanced courses and the content
of those courses. Also identify any non-administrative limitations
that prevent the realization of the wish-list.
-
Compile lists of specific research problems that fall within the identified
UCGIS research initiatives.
-
Compile lists of teaching units (in the style and format of the NCGIA core
curriculum) that address background material and other issues related to
specific research problems that fall within the identified UCGIS research
initiatives.
(2) Classify GIScience research topics into those that expand the breadth
of the science (enlightening or finding application in related fields,
for example), and those that expand the depth of the science (illuminating
or generalizing the existing underlying scientific theory, for example).
Strategies and Requirements to Meet This Goal:
-
Identify tools such as GISystems that have found utility in other sciences.
Differentiate tools from techniques and methodologies.
-
Create an inventory of theoretical results that form foundations of GIScience.
-
Make lists of key results that are known and missing results that still
need to be determined in all of the UCGIS research initiative areas.
(3) Develop on-line reference materials and possibly single-topic
short courses for special advanced topics in GIScience.
Strategies and Requirements to Meet This Goal:
-
Identify possible topics and possible authors of web sites (the short course
instructors at Bar Harbor might be a good place to start).
-
Compile lists of hyperlinks to sites that contain information related to
one specific research problem within one specific research initiative.
(4) Design prototypes for on-line courses in Advanced PhD-level GIScience.
Strategies and Requirements to Meet This Goal:
-
Develop, publicize, and test one special-topic course in Advanced GIScience
(e.g., "Topology for GIScientists").
-
Once again, based on the experience of the initial short course, develop
a conceptual framework (perhaps in collaboration with researchers in the
education field) for how courses of this sort should be developed.
(5) Develop a curriculum for courses in Spatial Statistical Analysis
as prototypes for addressing the issues of researchers' needs.
Strategies and Requirements to Meet This Goal:
-
Collect topics and possible course units for different level courses for
different audiences, but always identify the level and audience for each
topic.
-
List and examine conflicting considerations for presenting the units or
modules (e.g., student ability and previous specialized training or lack
thereof).
-
Consider the components of a service course for outstanding researchers
and Ph.D. students in outside fields of study, such as anthropology.
(6) Examine current GISystems capabilities, limitations, and potential
for growth in areas of spatial analysis, spatial statistics, and modeling.
Strategies and Requirements to Meet This Goal:
-
Compile a checklist of GISystem capabilities for leading commercial products,
highlighting advanced areas that are inadequately developed.
-
Compile a wish list of GISystem capabilities in advanced areas such as
analysis, spatial statistics, and mathematical modeling.
(7) Identify other areas like "Spatial Statistics" that require
different focuses for different research-capable audiences; and analyze
the needs of the various audiences and potential researchers in different
fields.
Strategies and Requirements to Meet This Goal:
-
Identify all of the different kinds of GIScience-related research that
are being done differently by more than one department or research group
at UCGIS institutions (e.g., spatial database activities take place in
CS departments, Geography departments, Regional Planning departments, etc.).
-
Classify the different approaches and relate them to the requirements of
each research group.
(8) Conduct a survey of member institutions on the focus of GIScience
research activities within and between member departments.
Strategies and Requirements to Meet This Goal:
-
Identify what is currently being done, noting especially any interdisciplinary
research.
-
Find out what else the groups would like to be doing if they could; and
find out why they are not yet doing those things.
(9) Compile a list and description of GIScience research methods and
approaches.
Strategies and Requirements to Meet This Goal:
-
Identify what is currently being done, noting especially any interdisciplinary
research.
Bibliography
Elements of Cartography, by Robinson, Morrison, Muehrcke,
Kimerling, and Guptill, 6th edition, John Wiley, 1995.
``Cartography and the Spatially Literate Population of the 21st Century'',
by Joel Morrison, in Cartography and Geographic Information Systems,
20(4), October 1993, 204--209.
COMMENTS AND RESPONSE TO THIS DRAFT
Comments from Art Getis, 15 July
Response from Alan Saalfeld, 19 July
Editor:
Alan Saalfeld, Department of Civil
and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science, Ohio State University,
saalfeld.1@osu.edu
------
Additional Working Group Members (in alphabetical order):
Raj Kumar Aggarwala, Department
of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan
Art Getis, Department
of Geography, San Diego State University
Dan Griffith, Department
of Geography, Syracuse University
David Mark, Department
of Geography, SUNY Buffalo
E. Lynn Usery, Department
of Geography, University of Georgia
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