Latest Contributions by LauraBowden

New: Higher Ed Guide to Esri E-Learning for Planning and Geodesign The planning field is vast and deep. Planners work in urban, rural, and regional contexts. They work at community and neighborhood scales, or they can work across broad national boundaries and urban megacities. They also touch on themes related to poverty, equity, transportation, housing, climate change and more.  Data courtesy Boston Planning and Development AgencyMuch of the work that planners are engaged in is spatial! Every issue, challenge, or success is grounded in a specific location and can be visualized and analyzed within that geographic context. Yet many academic planning programs do not include basic uses of GIS across the program. Planners need a wide array of tools and skills to address everything from grand challenges to micro-community scale issues. There are many ways that GIS can be incorporated into planning programs without  the necessity of specialized skills. For example, learners could use maps and ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World data to investigate the history of redlining and current demographic trends. They could go into the field and use Survey123 to capture street level data related to bicycle infrastructure and stated community needs. Or learners could add context to proposed zoning changes by visualizing what those changes actually mean. The Higher Ed Guide to Esri E-Learning for Planning and Geodesign can help you identify relevant e-learning in Esri Academy. The guide is a curated, organized list of videos, web courses, Learning Plans, and other learning resources. Brief course descriptions are included along with course catalog links. I hope that this new guide inspires you to incorporate GIS into your planning courses or program. Improved: All Higher Ed Guides include new ArcGIS Labs All Higher Ed Guides are updated to include recently published ArcGIS Labs. (Read this blog about the new ArcGIS Labs e-learning format.) As an aid to instructors, for ArcGIS labs that contain content previously available in tutorials, the former tutorial title is given in the new ArcGIS lab's description.  Higher Ed Guides to Esri E-Learning are available for the following content areas: Modern GIS  Spatial Data Science  Imagery and Remote Sensing  Planning and Geodesign ... View more

In October, Esri Academy has added three new e-learning resources in the area of imagery and remote sensing. Most exciting is an introductory web course on the topic, which educators have been requesting for some time. The 3.5-hour course, Getting Started with Imagery and Remote Sensing, requires ArcGIS Pro 2.9 (Standard or Advanced), ArcGIS Image Analyst, and ArcGIS Spatial Analyst software. Students who complete the course will be able to explain how imagery derived from remote sensing can be used to extract information about Earth’s surface. They’ll also be able to apply the raster information model to effectively visualize imagery for real-world scenarios. The course includes numerous diagrams, including animated and interactive diagrams, to convey concepts such as sensor types, the electromagnetic spectrum, and raster data models for imagery management. It is organized into four topics: Basics of remote sensing Image properties Seeing beyond the visible Imagery in ArcGIS Pro Students build skills using ArcGIS Pro in which they evaluate spectral profiles, explore raster resolutions, observe features in different band combinations, and examine and create mosaic datasets. Getting Started with Imagery and Remote Sensing is just one of several e-learning resources included in the new Imagery and Remote Sensing Fundamentals Learning Plan. Many educators are finding value in teaching with ArcGIS Image for ArcGIS Online. Deep Learning Using ArcGIS Image for ArcGIS Online is another new web course that may be of interest. Students who have completed Getting Started with Imagery and Remote Sensing will be ready to learn how to use a pretrained deep learning model from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World to support GIS analysis. This course can be completed in under two hours. You can find these and many others listed in the Higher Ed Guides to Esri E-Learning, most recently updated on October 18, 2022. Higher Ed Guide to Esri E-Learning for Imagery and Remote Sensing Higher Ed Guide to Esri E-Learning for Modern GIS Higher Ed Guide to Esri E-Learning for Spatial Data Science ... View more

Many exciting developments have been taking place with ArcGIS capabilities and workflows surrounding imagery, rasters, drones, and the like. If you teach about imagery and remote sensing you might be spending some time this summer updating your materials. At the same time, Esri's imagery and raster e-learning curriculum is being modernized. A growing number of web courses, training seminars, videos, and other offerings on Esri Academy are available for you to advance your skills and to use in student instruction. Additional courses on the topic of imagery will be rolled out over the coming months. The Higher Ed Guide to Esri E-Learning for Imagery and Remote Sensing, is a curated list designed to help you make comparisons and choices among the many e-learning resources we offer in this topic. Two other curriculum guides are also available from Esri Training. All three guides are generally updated quarterly. Higher Ed Planning Guide to Esri E-Learning Higher Ed Guide to Esri E-Learning for Spatial Data Science Keep in mind that different courses can be available for different software versions. Before assigning or taking a specific course, please visit the catalog page and verify that it is available for the software version you or your students will be using. Also, finding imagery offerings in the Esri training catalog has become easier. The catalog search now incudes a topic filter for Imagery & Remote Sensing. You can further refine the results by focus areas such as Get Started, or Analyze Imagery. ... View more

The fully updated  Higher Ed Planning Guide to Esri E-Learning now has a permanent link that you can bookmark. This link will always point to the most current version of the document.  A few years ago I created an annotated guide to e-learning as an aid to instructors. At the time, the Esri Academy catalog was beginning to include more ArcGIS Pro web courses, and it was difficult to compare what courses were available for ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro. My Planning Guide was intended to help instructors make this comparison more easily. After the Spring 2019 guide update, a new curriculum approach was initiated for Esri web courses. Unfortunately, time passed, and updating the Planning Guide turned into a big project! At this point, the Esri Academy curriculum has settled down a bit, and the Planning Guide update is complete. The document is organized according to major functional areas, with subsections for ArcGIS Online ArcGIS Pro, and ArcMap. Each entry has a brief description of the course content, and a link to the course's Catalog page on Esri Academy. Before assigning a course, you should always check the online Catalog course software requirements to make sure that the course is available for the software version your students will be using. Additional software may be required, such as extensions or apps. You might also be interested this related guide: Higher Ed Guide to Esri E-Learning for Spatial Data Science ... View more

Spatial data science is receiving a lot of attention in higher education. Some institutions are setting up new programs or reorganizing existing ones that center around data science. Many instructors are starting to integrate spatial data science methods and technologies in their courses. Students are anxious to learn skills to benefit them in a future career.   If you teach geospatial technology, data science, or a related subject, consider including spatial data analysis and visualization in your course using ArcGIS to enrich your students’ experience. One easy way to get started is to use Esri e-learning resources in your course.   With hundreds of items in the Esri Academy catalog, it can be challenging to figure out which items pertain to spatial data science, and which ones are most applicable to the topics you are teaching or learning. That’s why we created a curated Guide to Esri E-Learning for Spatial Data Science. (The Guide is updated quarterly, and you can always find the direct link to the most recent version within the Guide's footer.)   The guide lists items in three broad groups—Learning plans, Technology, and Capabilities—and categories, such as ArcGIS and Python Scripting, and Predictive Analytics, so that you can see the big picture.   Resources listed include: Self-paced web courses Training Seminars and videos Tutorials Videos and story maps   Each resource is briefly described, allowing you to quickly identify items of interest. When you’re ready to dig into the details, just click a title to access the full catalog description.   Keep in mind that courses may be available for different software versions. Before assigning or taking a specific course, please visit the catalog page and verify that it is available for the software version you will be using.   Future updates to the Guide will be made using the same link so that you can bookmark it and always be sure you're looking at the latest version. We welcome your comments below. You can also reach us with questions about courses at gistraining@esri.com, or with questions about ArcGIS product licensing at highered@esri.com. ... View more