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Institutions | Training | Online Education | Papers / Articles
New trends in Geographic Information Technology Education
Gary Hunter and Clifford Ogleby
Department of Geomatics
University of Melbourne
VIC 3010, Australia
Tel. +61-3-8344-6806
Fax. +61-3-9347-2916
Email: garyh@unimelb.edu.au
1. Rationale for the new degree
Since the emergence of GIS in the late 1980s, there has been a shortage of skills in its use at several levels. This shortage has been identified in both developed countries (Tomlinson, 1993) and developing countries (Bishop et al., 2000). In addition, early leading researchers such as Raper and Green (1992) were of the view that the technical complexity of GIS operations and their sophisticated implementation requirements made the design and development of GIS difficult to understand.
Geographic Information Science (GIScience) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) primarily entered university curricula in the mid-1980s, although there are notable exceptions such as at the State University of New York at Buffalo which commenced its graduate program a decade before in the early 1970s. The 1980s also saw the appearance of the first GIS textbooks (for example, Burrough, 1986). As the decade continued, a substantial body of texts covering the theory and application of GIS began to appear and these formed the backbone of GIS education.
Teaching of GIS through the 1990s continued to follow a largely conventional path with lectures on theory plus practical exercises using either the latest technology from the major vendors (such as ESRI and Intergraph) or more commonly through the use of more simplified PC-based, university-developed software products (such as MAP, IDRISI and MacGIS). Undoubtedly, a major breakthrough came with the establishment of the U.S. National Science Foundation-sponsored National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA), which chose as one of its first tasks to develop a core curriculum for GIS education (Goodchild and Kemp, 1990).
Since those early years, many institutions (including the University of Melbourne) have now established graduate programs in GIS, while individual service subjects have also been made widely available in GIS and remote sensing for undergraduates. However, there is now an increasing trend towards the recognition of geographic information science and technology as a discipline in its own right, and complete programs are becoming available at the undergraduate level. Examples from around the world include: the Bachelor of Geographic Information Science degree from Curtin University in Western Australia; the Bachelor of Science degree (in Geographic Information Science) from Macquarie University in New South Wales, Australia; and the Certificate of Excellence in Geographic Information Systems from the University of Waterloo, Canada. In numerous other cases, universities are offering a GIS-based specialisation within in their undergraduate geography or geomatics programs. So there is a range of mechanisms available for introducing GIS to educational curricula.
The current undergraduate degree administered by the Department of Geomatics at the University of Melbourne is the Bachelor of Geomatic Engineering—a four-year professional course of study that meets the requirements of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, the Institution of Surveyors, Australia, and the Surveyors Board of Victoria. The degree originally had its foundations in surveying and mapping science, but in recent years has moved into the wider domain of spatial or geographic information science and technology. Nonetheless, it is still fundamentally a professional engineering degree structured around the requirements of the professional bodies and licensing authorities that accredit it. In addition the Bachelor of Geomatic Engineering can be combined with the Bachelor of Arts, the Bachelor of Science, the Bachelor of Planning and Design (in Property and Construction), the Bachelor of Information Systems, and the Bachelor of Law. The history of the Department and its various courses are described more fully in Hunter (2001) and Bervoets et al. (1999).
However, the geomatic engineering discipline has rapidly expanded over the last five years—to the extent that the geographic component of information technology has now become a major global growth area. Indeed, annual worldwide expenditure in this field (in terms of software, hardware, training and data) is estimated in 2002 to be of the order of $34 billion, while in Australia alone it already exceeds $1 billion per annum. Thus, the demand for qualified graduates in this area is becoming more acute than ever before, and is certainly greater than the demand for graduates from the Department's mainstream professional engineering degree. For several years, members of the Department of Geomatics’ advisory board have advocated the introduction of a shorter 3-year undergraduate degree, which would specialise in meeting the variety of staffing needs of the geographic information industry.
Today there are few government organisations that do not utilize GIS in some way for managing their data and assets, and for aiding many of their strategic decisions. Furthermore, GIS is now accepted as a mainstream technology within local government and utilities, particularly for managing infrastructure, and these systems are also a key tool for the majority of environmental and natural resource management agencies. To give further indication of the growth of interest in this area, in 2000 the Australian federal government launched a national spatial information action agenda which is part of a program to support the growth of emerging strategic industries.
While the Bachelor of Geomatic Engineering degree has moved a long way towards helping to meet the shortfall in human capital in the geographic information industry, it is still constrained by its need to serve the land surveying and engineering professions, yet the rapidly growing geographic information industry is continuing to demand a three-year degree that better suits its own needs. Thus, the Department of Geomatics became convinced of the need for the new degree.
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