Summary of the Summit on
Geographic Information Science Education
Organized by the University Consortium for Geographic Information
Science
at GIS/LIS '98, Fort Worth TX, Tuesday Nov 10, 3:30-6:30pm
Background
There is rapidly growing interest in the multitude of education and
training issues that cut across stakeholder groups within the geographic
information science community. These issues include the appropriate curriculum
content for different constituencies; accreditation and certification;
methods of delivering GIS education; the roles of the universities and
the private sector in GIS training; educational partnership; and distance
learning in GIS. The Education Committee of UCGIS recognized that the recent
GIS/LIS conference in Fort Worth, Texas provided an ideal opportunity to
bring together representatives from a number of different organizations
to discuss these and other issues.
The objectives of the summit were to:
-
communicate each organization's current interests and activities regarding
education,
-
define issues of common interest and
-
lay out initial steps which will allow interested organizations to work
together.
Presenters and discussants were invited from professional and educational
organizations as well as government coordinating bodies. Participating
organizations submitted position papers in advance. These documents and
this summary of the discussion are available on the web at http://www.ucgis.org,
under the "Events" link. Attendance at the forum was open to all interested
persons and the agenda provided an extended opportunity for open discussion
following brief presentations from each group represented. A summary of
the major points in the presentations and discussion follows.
Summary
The presentations and discussions at this summit demonstrate a very
broad interest and concern about GIS education across a wide spectrum of
application areas. It is clear that current efforts to prepare students
and professionals for this evolving and expanding workplace are inadequate.
Perhaps the most striking conclusions that might be made are that "GIS"
is not the same in the different professions and that what needs to be
learned varies substantially across disciplines: for example, marketing
and sales people who need to gain spatial literacy, do not need the hardcore
computer engineering skills of the high end GIS programmer; GIS savvy ecologists
need to know about building simulation models with GIS while GIS data managers
in local governments likely do not.
Other issues that were raised included:
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Who is responsible for educating this expanding and evolving next generation
workforce? How do we address the educational needs of both new and existing
employees?
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Who is responsible for training graduates in the operation of specific
software? Should this be done by private sector employers, leaving "education"
to the universities? But what about small businesses and local governments,
how can they afford to take on the training role?
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Where should GIS positions be placed within personnel structures?
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If we educate our students to become full GIScientists, encompassing all
the components of computer science, geography and business management discussed,
how can small businesses and local governments afford to employ them?
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How can we get incoming students to think about learning geography no matter
what their home discipline is?
-
How can we raise the level of what is taught in introductory GIS courses
in order to ensure that students taking only one course in GIS learn something
useful? Should these introductory courses have prerequisites such as spatial
literacy, computer programming, and/or database design?
-
How can university educators deal with the inevitable intra-university
turf wars which will arise as GIS becomes diffused across campuses?
The wide-ranging discussion suggested several avenues for moving forward
on resolving or at least addressing these issues in greater depth. Certainly,
this opportunity to share education issues with colleagues in other professions
was very useful. Further opportunities for communication and cooperation
between professional associations on education needs must be found. Additionally,
in any future discussion of education needs across the professions, it
is important to specify the target education each profession desires, i.e.
we need to clarify what are the different types of GIS professions and
their necessary qualifications and education. There are examples of similar
kinds of cross-disciplinary education debates in other professional fields
serving very diverse populations (such as Wetland Science, Computer Science
and Statistics) which may provide models for consideration by the GIS community
as we being to seek resolution of these issues.
Finally, the discussion led to the identification of at least three
opportunities for resolution of these issues:
-
UCGIS's Model Curriculum Project seeks to develop a model, multi–path curriculum
for GIScience. This curriculum will lay out a number of paths corresponding
to those most likely to be required by students involved with GIScience
at various levels of involvement and will identify the specific knowledge
components that need to be associated with each path. Opportunities for
review and discussion of this Curriculum will be provided to the entire
GIS community as it evolves.
-
A proposed "Education Consortium in GIScience" is intended to provide an
organization parallel to UCGIS with a concentration on education issues
and the involvement of the entire GIS education community. All the organizations
represented at this summit should be encouraged to become major players
in this new consortium.
-
Another in the continuing series of GIS Education conferences is currently
being proposed to be held in the Los Angeles area in November 1999. Again,
this meeting would provide an excellent opportunity for continued discussion
of the issues raised at this meeting.
It is hoped that this year's Education Summit is only the first such annual
event at which the entire GIS community can discuss education issues affecting
all of us.
Summary prepared by Karen K. Kemp, University of California Santa
Barbara, November 20, 1998.