Home > Education > Papers / Articles
Institutions | Training | Online Education | Papers / Articles

Re-thinking GIS education
David Rhind & Jonathan Raper
City University, London
Email: drhind@city.ac.uk

There seem to be about 2 million GIS users at present. About 2000 universities run courses on GIS and hundreds of other courses are run by non-academic organisations, such as software vendors. Those taking the courses come from a huge variety of backgrounds - environmentalists, people working in local and central government, utility companies, the military and not-for-profit bodies. There seem to be about 100 different GIS textbooks.

Yet, despite all this, GIS education and training is astonishingly similar world-wide and - in our view - is mostly stuck on historical tram lines.

Why so similar?

The reasons why GIS courses are so similar reflect the causes of our past success. These include:
  • The fact that GIS was largely seen simply as a technology until recently. Such technology is becoming universal and the gap between its creation and adoption elsewhere is getting shorter
  • The homogenising influence of using the same technology and even the same terminology, derived from the sales success of ESRI and a few other vendors, mostly American. For example,'buffer' is now a universal concept following its use by ESRI - other terms used previously have disappeared
  • The homogenising influence of such academic collaborations as the creation of the NCGIA Core Curriculum of 1990, made freely available and advertised widely through academic channels, plus the many international links which grew in the 1980s and 1990s between university researchers
In short, GIS has become a global business through de facto adoption of core standards in thought, word, action and tools. Does this in principle mean that we have created globally employable citizens - that those trained in Adelaide should be able to work immediately in Zurich? The answer is no - at least if we see GIS-trained people as more than lowly technicians.

What's wrong?

The problem with all this is that GIS is not just a technology. It is increasingly part of the way in which commerce, government and academia - all operating in some senses as businesses - operate. Yet, as anyone who goes to work in a wholly new environment will testify, life inside businesses is not homogeneous. Different businesses need different contextual knowledge and application-specific experience. Cultural differences mean different approaches are required in different places. Many of these factors are changing so learning is now life-long and different modes of up-date and continuous professional development are essential. The nature of GIS tools and GI is that many different answers are sometimes possible: ethics become a significant matter. How learning is achieved needs to reflect best practice in use of IT and also meet stringent quality criteria. And finally, what is important is bringing benefit to the organisation - not just doing something neat with GIS - so institutional objectives and standards need to be factored in. Employers need multi-disciplinary skills and institutional awareness, not simply clever fingers and packaged solutions.

Page 1 of 3    
Next