20 ingredients important for a vibrant and sustainable higher education geospatial program

JosephKerski

Resulting from the work I have been engaged in with colleagues during the past several decades in supporting and fostering geospatial programs in colleges and universities around the world, I offer these 20 ingredients important for successful implementation of geotechnologies for your consideration.  As with any "top" list, these ingredients are open to debate.  Therefore, I welcome your comments; the challenges you have faced in building and sustaining your own program, and your own recommended best practices.

Why is such a list and an essay needed?   I and my colleagues frequently write about the rapid evolution of GIS, education, and society in this space and in other venues such as LinkedIn, and for good reason:  These changes affect why, when, and how GIS technologies and spatial thinking can and should be taught and used in education.  We cannot 'rest on past laurels' and expect our programs to thrive in higher education if we are not actively considering innovative ways to teach in the future. 

First, I would like to remind the reader that there are higher, nobler goals to teaching, learning, and research with GIS, as seen in the graphic below:

This list of 5 benefits, too, is open to debate, and indeed, they are not the only ones. In fact, in this essay, I describe 10 educational benefits that GIS offers. But whether the list includes 5 or 10 items, the key takeaway is that learning GIS software and tools is an important benefit, one which certainly will help the learner obtain their career goals.  However, learning GIS tools is a side benefit to the higher, nobler goals listed above and in the essay (the higher goals include community connections and content knowledge).  The tools change; they continually evolve:  Thus, keep focused on the most important tool of all--your brain!  GIS has always been a thinker's tool. 

I would also like to propose to the reader that there are 3 facets, or audiences, of education to support and that could benefit by the geographic approach, spatial thinking, and GIS:  Instruction (which affects students and faculty), research (again which affects students and faculty), and administration.  Administration could include campus facilities, recruitment and retention, alumni network management, campus safety, and anything else that helps the campus be safe, energy efficient, well managed, and be able to grow to meet future needs. 

I also submit that there should be 2 major areas of education focus:  1.  A deeper understanding of GIS, and 2.  A wider understanding of GIS.   A deeper understanding means thinking about and working with GIS as a platform, rather than just "a set of tools at version 3.x".   GIS in its true "GISsystems" meaning is more relevant than ever before, as it has evolved into a platform that enables people to gather data in the field, or from a spreadsheet, or imported from a business system or statistical package, or from data libraries including streaming data services, or from a UAV, or via other means, map that data (including symbolizing, projecting, filtering, and other tools), analyzing that data (using desktop, cloud, or server arrays of capacity), and communicating that data (via web mapping applications such as story maps, dashboards, or instant apps; customized sites such as from Experience Builder), custom applications from working with Jupyter Notebooks or the SDKs and APIs, and/or any other type of multimedia including infographics and video. Importantly, this deeper understanding includes the essence of why GIS was created in the first place--that it leads to action--smarter, more sustainable, equitable, and resilient decision-making. 

What I mean by the "wider" understanding of GIS is that the spatial thinking and analysis that it fosters needs to be embedded throughout the campus--not only in teaching, research, and facilities as I mentioned above, but in multiple disciplines.  In short, GIS is just too valuable with its focus on change over space and time to be confined to geography, environmental science, and GIScience on campus:  It needs to be in civil engineering, mathematics, economics, geo-and-ocean-and-atmospheric sciences, sociology, business, urban planning, data science, language arts, biology, and others. I would argue that GIS and spatial thinking can benefit any discipline concerned about empowering their students to be change agents who are able to frame and solve meaningful problems --which should be every discipline.   

Before offering this list of 20 ingredients or recommendations, the reader needs to recognize that there is no single pathway for higher education institutions to embrace GIS.  Colleges and universities need to carefully consider their mission, objectives, where they want to be in the next decade and beyond, their capacity, their student body, their workforce needs, their existing strengths in spatial thinking and technology, and much more.  Indeed, as I have worked with campus over these past many years, campuses have been innovating with GIS in many ways.  The best pathway for your campus might not be the same pathway for others. 

I also want to remind the reader who is considering becoming involved in GIS education, or is already involved, that they need to spend most of their time listening.  I have the honor of visiting 35 campuses annually (example here), with over 100 webinars each year to campuses, and I spend a lot of time listening to needs, challenges, concerns, and visions.  I encourage you that if you do the same, your advice will be more relevant and valuable to the busy educators and administrators with whom you are working.  Lastly, this is a rapid time of change for educational institutions, for society, and for all technologies including geotechnologies.  These changes can be stressful for faculty and entire institutions, but they can also bring about innovation, as I recently wrote about in this essay on this Esri Education community space.  

The 20 Ingredients

The following are my 20 ingredients and recommendations that I believe are important for a vibrant and sustainable higher education geospatial program, for your consideration.  You may already be engaged in many of these, and if so, share with others!  I do hope that this is helpful as you chart your pathway forward. 

1.      Build a trusted, long-term partnership among industry (with Esri and others), educational institutions, and educational professional societies.  My colleagues and I, for example, have served on many advisory boards in the past and at present, and are willing to come alongside with you to chart a pathway forward.  Plus, of course, these partnerships can aid in gaining meaningful career pathways for your students, as we are always hiring as GIS continues to grow.  Regularly read our postings in this space and tap into the resources on effectively teaching modern GIS, integrating imagery, including coding, and other topics.   These postings are not created in a vacuum; rather, many result of our long term collaboration with the education community! 

2.  Establish and fund a geospatial librarian(s).  Our colleague Professor David Cowen recently published an ebook that I highly recommend, entitled University Libraries as Providers of GIS Services:  A Guide.    On many campuses, this geospatial librarian is tasked with providing GIS training, services, coordination, and data hosting, and even more importantly, assisting faculty and students throughout the campus in their use of GIS. 

3.      UAV/Drones are a hot topic right now.  Enrich your Remote Sensing offerings with existing or planned UAV/Drones projects on campus, integrating mapping and analysis, including the services of the equipment and student/faculty expertise to university marketing and media staff, and other programs on campus.   In other words, make sure the campus understands that UAVs are not just pretty pictures or videos, but can be a meaningful component in your GIS program, and help the campus become more sustainable, energy efficient, and aid in infrastructure mapping. 

4.      A partnership between research and teaching -> and the Facilities Management, recruitment, alumni network, and other administrative people on campus so they see the value of using GIS as well for recruitment and funding, campus safety, infrastructure mapping, energy efficiency in buildings. This must be be regularly communicated to the provost and others who are regularly in budget/enrollment meetings.

5.      Implement SSO Single Sign On to increase access and to make life easier to students, faculty, and the ArcGIS campus administrator(s).

6.      Establish a campus-wide institutional agreement for Esri technology if the campus does not already have one.  This greatly aids in accessing GIS for all disciplines on campus, enabling the "GIS for everyone" goals mentioned above. 

7.      Regularly communicate with other faculty on campus to help them think spatially and use GIS in mathematics, economics, business, sociology, civil engineering, history, humanities, and elsewhere to increase student engagement, career pathways, interdisciplinary research and development opportunities, and to increase spatial, holistic, and critical thinking and problem solving throughout campus.

8.      Consider innovative mixtures of modes of instruction – hybrid, F2F, online – and credential offerings – microcredentials, certificates, degrees, and  GIS courses that meet requirements in natural and social sciences, computer science, etc.

9.      Showcase student work on campus media posts, newsletters, alumni networks, in their data portals, ArcGIS Hub, ArcGIS Online main campus page, and in other ways – along the lines of "a map being worth 1000 pictures."  Provide regular venues for students to present often at meetings, conferences, and other events.

10.   Connect students with meaningful internships and job positions in the region and beyond. Forging partnerships with industry, business partners, government agencies, nonprofits.  Research who in the area that the campus serves already regularly uses ArcGIS and GIS technology day-to-day in their work.  

11.  Embedding a rigorous amount of app development and coding into GIS course offerings, as GIS continues to become a cloud-enabled technology platform. 

12.   Establish a database connecting those in government, business, and nonproits who need student assistance with for their GIS projects with students on campus willing to do the work. 

13.   Make fieldwork a key component of many courses:  Start with short activities on campus that can use easy-to-implement tools such as ArcGIS Survey123. Students could map trees, ADA ramps, pedestrian counts, light poles, bike paths, and more, and could participate in the Esri campus mapping program. 

14.   Thread ethics, developing healthy critical perspectives of all data including mapped data, rigorous attention to metadata and “trustworthiness” of data, into courses in meaningful and hands-on ways, as is discussed here  https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com .

15.   Use the AI ArcGIS tools and discuss their implications.  These tools are already in many ArcGIS products and will continue to expand as they change GIS in the process.

16.   Regularly assess which student work could be shared (with all caveats about permissions for data and permissions from the student) beyond a single university department within the university and outside the university, so these amazing maps and analysis students create are regularly seen by others.  Encourage students to include their web maps and apps in their digital portfolios as story maps, web maps, and other media.  Focus on students as a vital part of your campus communicators!  Together with you as faculty, students can be a powerful force to build meaningful relationships with organizations in the community and beyond. 

17.   Consider ArcGIS Online and SaaS solutions as key components of introductory GIS courses and courses in other disciplines, with the objective of generating student interest with an easier to use approach tool for mapping, analysis, and communication.  Use ArcGIS Pro in intermediate and advanced courses.

18.   Focus on problem solving and less on ‘how to run specific GIS tools’ in many courses; i.e. teaching and modeling 'how to be a lifelong learner.’

19.   Content knowledge matters to employers such as Esri and others – students need to focus on selected content that they can apply GIS to; in other words, if they “just” know GIS, and not, say, demographics or hydrologic processes or natural hazards or some other field(s), they won’t be as highly in demand in the workplace. 

20.   Focus on your campus strengths while considering the community, region, and areas beyond in which you serve, F2F or virtually:   If your strength is water and natural resources management, consider tying that to your future GIS program offerings.  Ditto for other strengths.  When I visited Western Kentucky University, I noted how they tied their GIS program to data science in part for pathways for their students to find employment as data analysts at the nearby Fruit of the Loom headquarters.  When I visited Western Illinois University, I noted how they tied their GIS program to two areas where the campus was already strong:  Agriculture and Meteorology.   While you focus on strengths, however, still keep in mind the holistic 'systems' thinking that GIS needs to foster. 

I look forward to your comments.

--Joseph Kerski 

 

KirkOda

Thank you for sharing your recommendations to build a sustainable GIS program. The article is also beneficial for understanding the trends in GIS education.