Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

I have written a fundamentals of mapping and GIS in the Fourth Edition of Key Methods of Geography textbook, published by Sage Publications.  If you are seeking a single chapter about what GIS is and why it matters, this might very well fit that need.  Beyond my chapter, the book contains a great deal of pertinent content about, as the title indicates, key core methods essential for the geographic sciences, including field data collection equipment and methods, statistical analysis, spatial analysis, remote sensing, and much more.   The book was edited by the following experienced geographers who I have a great deal of respect for.  These people really know what they are doing; they have crafted a book that provides foundations but also is very practical and up-to-date, and it was a great honor to be asked to contribute a chapter to their book: Nicholas Clifford - Loughborough University, UK Meghan Cope - University of Vermont, USA Thomas Gillespie - University of California, Los Angeles, USA Joseph Kerski pictured with the new book "Key Methods in Geography" by Sage Publications. The book's chapters include identifying key literature for your assignment, interviews and focus groups, researching affect and emotion, historical and archival research, exploring the physical environment, UAS/UAV/drone research methods, case studies, scholarly writing, coding, organizing and analyzing, and much more.   The book concludes with the chapter "Doing Engaged Scholarship:  Why Methods Matter" again reflecting the practical nature of the book.    I begin my chapter with a story about crowdsourcing as a result of a potential tragedy--an oil spill off of a beach in Southern California, and build from there about what GIS is, how it is different from the GIS of the past, and why it all matters.  In the chapter I even start with challenging the definition of "map" that many people might have in their minds, nudging them to consider maps as analytical tools and not just reference documents.  I then discuss spatial data, geotechnologies, the goal of GIS, topology, spatial data, data models, spatial statistics, geoliteracy, how GIS has evolved, and encouraging the reader to consider GIS in the reader's own career pathway.  I include data quality, ethics, forces acting on GIS, and skills important to the reader seeking to use GIS for the first time or to deepen their use of it.  I did everything I could to ensure that GIS is considered a "key method" of geography and geographers, and not relegated to "just the GIS people."  I included plenty of lively and intriguing maps and illustrations throughout the chapter.   A section of my chapter on GIS. I am happy to share my chapter with you upon request but I really encourage you to investigate and use the entire book.  I highly recommend the book for faculty teaching research methods, and/or physical/cultural geography and geotechnologies, and for any student in geography, GIS, or environmental sciences.  --Joseph Kerski      ... View more

I have created a new course linked here, with a focus on geospatial data, GIS, and society.  This course invites you to work with real data to solve problems and foster skills through a set of readings, hands-on activities, discussions, quizzes, and a final project.  Course Description:   Geospatial data are the foundation upon which GIS and spatial analysis rests. As GIS has matured, the challenge has evolved from generating data to managing the enormous volume of data from government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and industry, and increasingly, from ordinary citizens through citizen science and volunteered geographic information efforts. Key to working with this volume of data are essential issues such as privacy, copyright, public domain, cost recovery, metadata standards, and data quality that GIS professionals must grapple with to be effective in the 21st Century. This class discusses and applies these issues and works with a rich array of data sources to enable effective decision-making in a Geographic Information System.  The prerequisite for this course is an introductory GIS course or similar GIS course and/or work experience. Course Questions: The course is focused on three questions: 1.  How can I find geospatial data for my projects? ✔️ 2.  How do I know if I can trust the geospatial data that I find?   In other words, how can I assess geospatial data quality? ✔️ 3.  How can I consider societal issues surrounding geospatial data and tools, including copyright, location privacy, ethics, symbology, classification methods, map projections, and others? ✔️ Course Philosophy:  Four philosophies run through the course: ✏️1.  Data is the foundation for all mapping, analysis, and decision-making that stems from that mapping and analysis.  Thus, data and data quality are vitally important to continually ask questions about, to seek, and to assess. ✏️2.  Scale matters.  Patterns and relationships may exist at one scale and not another, and vice versa.  The scale at which you are conducting your analysis and the scale at which your data has been collected and published have great influences on the patterns that you will see, and the patterns that will remain hidden. ✏️3.  You will encounter data that is understandable, and data that is confusing.    You will encounter data portals that are easy-to-use, and others that are difficult.  This is intentional:  The course instructor is not cleaning up any of the data or the data sites.  You will encounter the exact same thing in the workplace, and learning how to deal with geo-data challenges is central to the objectives of this course. ✏️4.  Today's GIS tools and open data portals are easier to use than ever before.  However, learning GIS is not just learning software interfaces and where data are located.  Central to successful use of GIS and to this course is cultivating a healthy critical view of data and of GIS tools--recognizing their benefits, and also their limitations.   Course Themes: Weekly themes of this course include: Week 1:  Spatial data and the public domain.    GIS in our everyday lives.  📖 Week 2:  Vector data model and data, portals, data quality. 📖 Week 3:  Raster data model and data, portals, location privacy. 📖 Week 4:  Data costs, local data access. 📖 Week 5:  Metadata and standards.  National and state data portals.  📖 Week 6:   National and international data infrastructures and initiatives.  📖 Week 7:  Data policies.  📖 Week 8:  Crowdsourced data.  Data disclaimers. 📖 Week 9:  Cloud computing and GIS.  Software as a service. 📖 Week 10:  The future of public domain spatial data.  📖   Course Prerequisites and History: This 10 week online course was created for a graduate program inside a university GIS program.  This course is meant to follow an introductory course covering basic GIS skills.  I have taught, assessed, and improved this course each year over the span of over 20 years and am happy to share it with the community.  The course was originally taught face-to-face, then taught online via a Learning Management System (LMS), and then moved into a space so that you can access it, above.   Course Issues, Skills, Data Sets, and Portals: Major issues addressed include:   Data sources, data representation and models, data quality, metadata, spatial data input and output, spatial analysis, location privacy, copyright, streaming vs. downloading data, on premises servers vs. open access, spatial data serving policy.  🌍 Major skills addressed include:  spatial data management, analyzing tabular information, data input and querying, locating spatial data, assessing spatial data, formatting spatial data, projecting, georeferencing, geocoding, overlay and proximity, merging, raster data analysis, preparing 3D visualizations, making decisions with GIS and data. 🌍 Major data sets used in this course:   World Resources Institute (WRI), USGS vector and raster data, US Census Bureau demographic data, historical images and maps, UAV imagery, soils and hydrography data, WWF ecoregions data, land cover data, real-time data feeds, xy coordinate data, satellite imagery, and more.  🌍 Data portals included:   ArcGIS Hub sites, ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, USGS National Earthquake Information Center, USGS National Map, local government sources, UNEP, data.gov, state GIS portals, and others.  🌍 Course Delivery Formats: The course contents are served as an Experience Builder app.  Each tile in the graphic above links to a story map.  The introduction "row" in the Experience Builder app contains 4 elements, or tiles.  Week 1, reading across, contains 3 elements; Week 2 contains 2 elements, and so on.  Toggle to the other two pages in app to see the rest of the course. To see the course contents as a story map collection, click here.   Both Experience Builder and Story Map collections have advantages.  Consider content that you would like to host, or you want your students to host, and think about serving that content through Experience Builder, Story Map Collections, ArcGIS Hub sites, or via the ArcGIS APIs and SDKs.  By exposing your students to these many options, you foster their skills across the web GIS platform as they gain even more capability and empowerment. Course Text and Relevance: The course uses The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data as its text, that I co-authored with Jill Clark, and readings and activities from the book's associated data blog, Spatial Reserves.   The course was originally conceived by the University of Denver, and I salute Steve Hick there for his foresight in establishing and keeping this course on the DU University College GIS roster.  I changed the course over the years from a focus on a survey of spatial data types and portals to a solving problems with spatial data course with a heavy infusion of societal implications.  I would argue that this course is more relevant now than ever before, now that everyone can easily access, use, create, and share geospatial data, and societal issues surrounding location and mapping, including AI, become ever more simultaneously personal and global.  I encourage other universities and college to consider offering a "data and society" focused course.  If you do not have one at your institution, perhaps this course can provide some ideas and inspiration. The textbook, exercises, and everything a student needs to take the course are included in the Experience Builder app.  Everything a faculty member needs to incorporate the course into your own program and courses is there as well.  The only things that did not completely port from the LMS are the interactive discussion boards and the self-assessment capabilities of the quizzes.   Course Structure and Sequence: Each week of the course, a set of readings provides background, and a short activity fosters skills.  During selected weeks, a longer hands-on lab activity is included, and a short quiz for the learner to assess their progress is included.  Leading up to the last weeks of the course, a final project proposal involving GIS and public domain data is also included, to be turned in during the last week of the course. The short hands-on activities each week using ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro cover the following themes: Week 1:  Filling out a crowdsourced survey and visualizing the results in a map and dashboard. ✔️ Week 2:  Analyzing real-time x-y formatted data (earthquakes). ✔️ Week 3:  Using NREL renewable energy data to choose the optimal site for a wind farm. ✔️ Week 4:  Analyzing floodplains in Boulder County Colorado. ✔️ Week 5:  Analyzing risk to reservoirs from hurricanes in Texas. ✔️ Week 6:  Comparing national data portals in the USA and New Zealand. ✔️ Week 7:  Examining metadata and standards. ✔️ Week 8:  Examining data disclaimers, add data to crowdsourced project. ✔️ Week 9:  Using a map package to examine ecoregions in Brazil, save to the cloud. ✔️ Week 10:  Final project presentation.  ✔️ The longer lab hands-on activities using ArcGIS Pro cover the following themes: 1.  Examining the temporal and spatial pattern of zebra mussels invasive species in the USA and Canada. 2.  Assessing the optimal locations for expanding tea cultivation in Kenya. 3.  Siting a fire tower in the Loess Hills, Nebraska. 4.  Creating an ecotourism map of New Zealand. Because of the course's short (10-week) duration, time did not permit me to include all of the lab exercises that we created for the public domain data and book.  However, the additional 6 lab exercises are here.   These additional labs cover the following themes: Climate Change (Coastal issues) Locating A High Speed Internet Cafe Flood Risk Analysis Land Use Suitability 3 hazards:  Natural and Human-Caused Hurricane hazards assessment The syllabus, objectives, software, discussion, quizzes, and final projects are all included, and the course is meant to be taught and learned in the following sequence: Week "O":  (before the course begins and during Week 1): Goals, instructor information, syllabus, software, announcements.  ➡️ Week 1:  Discussion 1, Lab 1. ➡️ Week 2:  Discussion 2, Quiz 1. ➡️ Week 3:  Discussion 3, Lab 2. ➡️Week 4:  Discussion 4, Quiz 2. ➡️Week 5:  Discussion 5, Lab 3, Quiz 3. ➡️ Week 6:  Discussion 6 ➡️Week 7:  Discussion 7, Lab 4, Quiz 4. ➡️Week 8:  Discussion 8  ➡️Week 9:  Discussion 9, Quiz 5.  ➡️Week 10:  Discussion 10, Final Project. I look forward to hearing your reactions to this course and how you are making use of it.   ... View more

How can Earth changes be effectively, quickly, and engagingly taught?  How can remote sensing principles be taught in an interactive way?  The new Landsat Explorer app can serve as a tool, method, and a data set to do just that, as this essay and lesson explains. The ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World is a collection of authoritative, metadata-rich geographic information from around the globe. Its 8,500 layers includes maps, data layers, and apps.  The Atlas is "living" in 2 ways:  (1) The content updates continuously with new resources; and (2) Some of the layers are from live feeds, including earthquakes, wildfire perimeters, traffic, streamflow, weather, and many more.  The ArcGIS Living Atlas apps (https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/en/apps/) are web mapping applications that use selected content from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World on specific themes, topics, and tools.  They offer several advantages in teaching:  They require no sign in; only a web browser and an internet connection is needed. They point to data that are rich in content and illustrate that we are living in a measured and complex world.  They feature maps as analytical tools (why things are where they are) and not just reference documents (where something is).  They cover topics and themes that are widely taught, including ocean chemistry, population change, precipitation, natural hazards, and many more.   Thus they can be used in GIS courses and in courses outside of GIS, such as physical and cultural geography, economics, history, city planning, agriculture, and others.   They focus on change over space and time, central to many disciplines.  They highlight the connection between Earth spheres (the lithosphere, atmosphere, anthroposphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and others).  They give students the tools and data to think spatially and realize the power of GIS.  They are tied to real locations, real data, and real issues, and thus can be used to teach current events (illustrated with a lesson on current wildfires, here).  They offer multiple levels of instruction—using the app as is without signing in (Level I), bringing in the data into ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Pro for further analysis and adding additional layers (Level II), and using the ideas presented in the apps for students to develop their own apps (Level III).  They touch on the forces and trends of community science, storytelling with maps, and Web-enabled GIS and data as services.   Let’s illustrate the above advantages in instruction with one new, amazing app:  The Landsat Explorer App.  The Landsat Explorer App Landsat is the longest running spaceborne earth imaging and observation program in history, managed by the USGS and NASA. The Landsat program began in 1972, with the launch of Landsat 1, providing a long-running continuous scientific record for critical and reliable observation and analysis of Earth processes and changes over time.  The Landsat Level-2 multispectral imagery is available in ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World as a dynamic time enabled image service, accessible across the ArcGIS system and used to power this app.  Use the app to understand land use and land change associated with urbanization, drought, wildfire, volcanism, and other natural processes, processes associated with human activity such as urbanization, deforestation, reforestation, construction of reservoirs, and processes that represent a combination of natural and human-influenced change, such as coastal erosion, glacial retreat and other climate change indicators, and more.   The app’s item page provides more detail.  For more information, see these essays about the launch (https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-living-atlas/imagery/landsat-explorer-earth-science-and-observation-for-all/), and its new data  https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-living-atlas-blog/unlock-the-wealth-of-information-in-landsat-level/ba-p/1388354.    The app offers an easy-to-use interface that makes it intuitive to teach with.  Some of the key capabilities include:  Visual exploration of a dynamic global mosaic of the best available Landsat scenes for any area of the planet and across a 50 year time period.  On-the-fly multispectral band combinations and indices for visualization and analysis.  Interactive Find a Scene by location, sensor, time, and cloud cover.  Analyze change over space and time; compare the same area with different renderings, using the Swipe and Animation tools.  Create threshold masks and temporal profiles for vegetation, water, land surface temperature, and more.  The Landsat Explorer Interface  The interface of the Landsat Explorer is straightforward and intuitive, but it offers a great deal of power!  See some of its main features in the graphic below.  Try them all!      5 Selected Investigations using the Landsat Explorer App   Access the Landsat Explorer app and try the following 5 activities, but we also encourage you and your students to do your own further investigations.   Go to > Interesting places and explore a few listed here.  One of our favorites listed is Richat, in Mauritania (shown here).  Conduct your own investigation as to the origin of Richat and encourage students to do so of a place they are interested in.  Use the search tool to go beyond the Interesting Places collection to your own location, or another area you are interested in.  Some of our favorites are coastal England at Eastbourne, central Saudi Arabia’s center pivot irrigation circles, and the active volcanoes on Kamchatka.   Also use the Find a Scene to find a scene of a particular year and cloud cover for a particular area.  The Find a Scene mode lets you specify a year and see all available images for that entire year in a single calendar view. Images meeting the selected cloud cover tolerance are displayed as solid blocks, while available scenes that do not meet the cloud tolerance are shown as outlines.      Use the Swipe and Animate tools on the left and select scenes at specific dates to see change over time.   Compare, say, a rapidly changing place such as Kuala Lumpur, central Saudi Arabia (shown below) or Dallas to a slowly changing place such as southeastern Libya or western Kansas USA.  What changes are occurring, and why are they occurring at different rates?  How does the rate of change in your area compare to those in other locations?        See one of the most rapidly changing places on the Earth, in Rondonia, Brazil, here and below. Why is it changing so rapidly?    Compare the spatial resolution, the coverage, and the band combinations of the different Landsat missions (4, 5, 7, 8, 9) that you have access to in this app.  Use the information on each scene that you examine to reinforce concepts in remote sensing such as the electromagnetic spectrum.   Use the temporal profile to analyze moisture, water, surface temperature, and other variables across a scene, and compare these variables to an area in a completely different biome (example below).   Use the Analysis > Mask tool to quickly delineate surface conditions, such as surface water, temperature, and vegetation, with spectral and index thresholding.  Render the results as a solid color mask on top of the imagery or as a clipping mask to reveal only the pixels within the specified threshold.   Using these tools, you could show areas with the healthiest vegetation and in the same area, show the hottest surface temperature in an area, to determine if there is a correlation between the lack of vegetation and the hottest surface areas (hottest areas around Denver on a specific data shown below).    Teaching Recommendations   (1)  Use the above guidance but use the tools and data behind them to meet your own curricular goals.   While using the tools, ask “What would happen if we changed the way the imagery is rendered?  What if we looked at this region of the world instead of that region?  What if we changed the scale?  How does where we live compare to areas nearby and far from us?   (2)  While using the tools, ask students, “what’s where, why is it there, and why should we care?”  Why should we care about [water quality / deforestation / coastal erosion / and other pressing issues of our planet”?    (3)  The tools are engaging and useful, but teaching and learning with GIS is never about just gaining GIS skills. While teaching about the tools, simultaneously teach about content—whether that content is focused on healthy vs diseased vegetation, irrigated vs non irrigated agriculture, land use change, biomes and ecoregions, the influence of topography and oceans on climate and subsequently on human settlement, and other themes.    (4)  Compare the resolution and band combinations available in the Landsat Explorer to the imagery in the Wayback Imagery App https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#active=60013&mapCenter=-115.29850%2C36.06400%2C14)  and the Sentinel-2 Land Cover Explorer app (https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/landcoverexplorer/#mapCenter=55.246%2C25.065%2C11&mode=step&timeExtent=2017%2C2022&year=2022).   What is similar about the imagery between these 3 apps?  What is different?  How is each of the apps useful in investigating Earth processes and changes?  (4)  Get into the data behind the app—use this opportunity to investigate Landsat and other types of remotely sensed imagery.  What are its advantages?  What are its limitations?  Investigate some of the data and society discussions via this book and blog.  For Further Exploration  Bern Szukalski and I taught about the Landsat Explorer tool in our recent Esri GIS Higher Education chat, along with other ArcGIS Living Atlas apps that you can explore in this story map.  The recording of that chat is in the archives for March 2024, here.     I look forward to hearing how you are using the app!    ... 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You and your students can powerfully and easily examine current events using Web GIS data and tools.  This essay models the study of one such current event, the Smokehouse Creek wildfire, which is sadly consuming much terrain in Texas and impacting many lives.  Teaching about current events can be readily incorporated into the classroom using open data portals and web GIS tools such as ArcGIS Online Map Viewer and ArcGIS Online apps.  This is a technique that my colleagues and I have named "Geonews", described in my essay, here:  Teaching the GeoNews Using GIS Technologies and th... - Esri Community.   In a nutshell, "Geonews" simply means teaching about current events, whether a natural hazards, political incident, scientific discovery, from local to global scale, on a regular basis in the classroom--it could be once a week such as every Monday morning, or even for 5 minutes at the beginning of each class period.  And I submit that teaching, learning, and understanding events is not complete without considering that event's spatial aspects.  And using Web GIS tools such as ArcGIS Online, apps, maps, and imagery can serve as powerful and easy-to-use tools to teach these topics.  I (and many of my education colleagues) have successfully tested these methods in classrooms in the USA and in many countries, from primary to university level, and in after-school and lifelong learning sessions in public libraries. I have also incorporated these methods into courses I share online, such as this one on Environmental GIS.  This approach can be effectively used by instructors as they teach, but even more powerful is when students are assigned the task to select and teach their peers in class about one current event.  A student, or group of students, can be assigned the task for, say, the beginning of Week 2 in a geography, GIS, environmental science, or even in a current events or political science course, and others, as well.  Another Group can take Week 3, and so on.  I have found that when students get involved, creativity happens!  Moreover, I have found that the students using this approach really make use of their maps and the spatial perspective to learn about and teach others about the event or issue.  This is a very effective way of teaching spatial thinking and the use of geotechnologies.   The grim details of the Smokehouse Creek wildfire can be studied using GIS in many ways.  I advise starting with the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World Wildfire Aware app.  No sign in is required, the real-time wildfire perimeters and points are available and additional information for you to ask these questions of your students:   How far is the wildfire from where you live?  What is the pattern and shape of the wildfire?   How large is the wildfire at its furthest extent?  How large is it compared to the areal size of your own city, county, or region?   What towns are impacted both in the wildfire perimeter and also downwind from it?  What landforms and ecoregions are in this area?  What animal, bird, and plant habitats are impacted?   What wildfires are nearby, and near to where you live?  My colleague Bern Szukalski and I recently focused on how to teach with these amazing and versatile ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World apps in one of our GIS Higher Education monthly chats.    Use other tools in conjunction with this Wildfire Aware App:  Examine Google street views if available in this area to understand the cultural and physical landscape there (vegetation, landforms, businesses, homes) to drive home the point that these are real events impacting real people's lives.  Read selected news reports, many of which increasingly include before-and-after swipe maps and satellite imagery.  What other resources can you find to help make your research more well-rounded? Examining wildfires with GIS. Next, dig deeper by opening up ArcGIS Online and accessing the Map Viewer.  Add population density from the "human imprint" layer and also from US Census Bureau's American Community Survey to understand the total population, age, income, and other characteristics of those impacted.  Add transportation to understand which arteries could be impacted and evacuation routes.  Add rivers and watersheds to understand how sedimentation could impact water quality.   Use world biomes and the North American ecoregions to more fully understand habitat, plants, and animals in the area.  Use the real-time weather feed to assess the possible future spread of the wildfire.   Add NOAA weather satellite imagery to see how the region is impacted by wildfire smoke. None of these ArcGIS Online activities require signing in, but next, dig deeper:  Sign in to your ArcGIS Online organization, and once signed in, additional options will be available:  You as the instructor can create maps and apps as teaching resources.  Your students will be able to save their maps, perform spatial analysis, share their maps to you as their instructor and to their peers, create instant apps, dashboards, or story maps from these maps, and use the maps as part of their continually-updating professional portfolio.  And for an even deeper investigation, they can bring the layers from those maps into ArcGIS Pro to perform further statistical and spatial analysis.  These same approaches can be used to study other wildfires, other hazards such as city fires, explosions, floods, eruptions, earthquakes, typhoons, political strife, but balance it with teaching about a few happier events too--using these approaches students can present about a city marathon, new library or school opening, new open space, parade, celebration, sporting event, or something else happening locally or somewhere else in the world.  I have created two videos that walk students and faculty through several investigations using the above techniques, of this wildfire.  The short version (1:45), which highlights the ArcGIS Living Atlas Wildfire Aware app, is here:  https://youtu.be/JI9Wjn7boFA?si=WbhFj1WhBvbSnapr The longer version (6:52) includes the ArcGIS Living Atlas Wildfire Aware app and a deeper dive using the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer, is here:  https://youtu.be/qGLY8zjD4dU?si=3g_jvmqbmz-w61qe.   I look forward to hearing your reactions, and meanwhile, all best wishes to those impacted by this and other natural hazards.   ... 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Do your kids love drawing maps? Their creativity could win them a national or even international award! The @cartographyGIS Barbara Petchenik Children's Map Competition is open to US students 15 years old and under. The deadline to submit is coming soon!  8 March 2024: https://cartogis.org/awards/children. As a long time admirer of this competition, and of the value of mapping as a tool to encourage students to think critically, holistically, and spatially, and as someone who treasures the books from past competitions, visible below, I highly encourage you to encourage students that you know to apply, and to tell teachers that work with these students to get involved.  Books of maps from the Petchenik Children’s Map Competition: The World Drawn by Children (2021, Spanish and English, PDF). Children Map the World (2017) Children Map the World (2015)   Children Map the World (2005) --Joseph Kerski ... View more

In our discussions with faculty, there arise frequent requests for examples of the modern approach to teaching subjects within modern geospatial technology and methods.  By “modern”, we refer to GIS as a system which provides a foundation to build upon and a variety of points at which to access.  By "subjects" we mean subjects within GIScience such as GIS methods, remote sensing, analytics, mapping (cartography, which I am sharing with this essay), and others, as well as subject areas where GIS can be used as an instructional tool, such as meteorology (which I shared here).  The "modern GIS" paradigm includes creating and using crowdsource-able field apps, rigorous consumption and creation of web maps and mapping applications such as story maps, coding and building expressions, performing spatial analysis, and other components of the web infrastructure as enabled by SaaS (Software as a Service) tools and data as services.  As part of this ongoing discussion, I would like to share a course that I created in Cartographic Design that serves as a course that embraces these elements.  The entire contents of the course are available here.  The course could serve as one model for a first course in modern GIS in higher education and to foster conversation about approaches, tools, data, and hands-on problem-solving activities.   The course contents could also be considered an e-book, as hundreds of pages of readings and hands-on activities are included.   A playlist of each of the 21 videos in the course is here.  A key advantage of serving this entire course is that you will see the readings, activities, videos, and quizzes as a scaffolded, complete whole, rather than just individual lessons.  Each component builds on other components in a sequenced way designed in tandem with vetted learning theory.      My goals in creating and providing this course are so that (1) anyone can take it without the need to access a Learning Management System (LMS) or any other system, as I exported it out of an LMS into a story map collection; (2) instructors can use components of this course for their own instruction (or the entirety of the course) at their own college or university.  Feel free to use this course however you see fit under a Creative Commons CC by 4.0 license. This course is aimed at university or technical, tribal, or community college students who have not had prior experience using GIS.  This course is 16 weeks long.   Each week, students work through the following components:  Readings, videos, and hands-on activities using interactive GIS tools (ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro, web mapping applications, field surveys, and selected other tools such as Axis Maps, WorldMapper cartograms, and ColorBrewer).  They take a short quiz, reflect upon their learning in discussions, and share the results of their investigations.  I also provide the quiz answers in the story map, although when I teach the course, the answers are not provided.   I have successfully taught this course with real students for 3 years; updating it each term. I migrated the course from a Learning Management System (LMS—in this case, BrightSpace D2L) to the resources you see here so that everyone can view and access.  I created a story map for each of the four modules that comprise each week of the course:  (1) Readings and discussion, (2) hands-on activities, (3) quizzes, (4) the quiz answers, and (5) the final few weeks lead up to a student-led project in cartography of their own choosing.  The plan thus helps students frame their own questions and research agenda, implement it using the tools they have learned in the course, and deliver it via a web mapping application of their choice.  I have taught this course at the community college level and most students in it had taken 1 GIS course prior to taking this Cartographic Design course, but not all, so I did include some "key foundations" at the beginning for those students who were new to GIS (but I trust served as an effective reminder for those in their 2nd course in GIS).  I would like to thank my colleague Nicole Ernst for laying the original vision for this course and for giving me the opportunity to teach it at Harrisburg Area Community College.  I made use of the UN Mapping for a Sustainable World e-Book for readings and examples about several key principles (I love that book!), as well as things I've learned over the years from some of my favorite cartographers Andy Woodruff and those from Esri, Kenneth Field (author of Esri Press book Cartography), Jim Herries, Charlie Frye, and Aileen Buckley (co-author of Map Use and tons more content). My key takeaways from this course include:  (1) I am very glad to see cartography making a return to core GIS courses, and it'.  With Web GIS, everyone is a potential mapmaker, and thus it is more imperative than ever that people learn about how to communicate effectively with maps, apps, infographics, and other geo-visualizations.  (2)  What worked very well was the combination of ArcGIS Online (which I used beginning Week 1 and throughout the course), and ArcGIS Pro (which I used from the midpoint of the course onward for its advanced cartographic techniques and tools), with the other tools I mention in this essay.  (3) As we frequently reassure faculty, there's no shame in using someone else's lesson when it meets your objectives and when it frees your time to focus on other aspects of the course.   In my case with this course, I used a Singapore-focused cartography lesson from the Learn ArcGIS library.  While it wasn't exactly what I would have done in that section of the course, it met 90-95% of my objectives, and it freed up dozens of development hours that I could now use to focus on developing the readings, videos, quizzes, final project, and rubrics.  I linked and organized all 19 story maps using an ArcGIS Story Maps collection, which was a straightforward way to present the content that I hope you find useful.  There is 1 story map for each of the 16 weeks, plus story maps for the quiz answers, the syllabus, the detailed outline, and the introductory materials.  ArcGIS Story Maps and the Experience Builder are two ways to present web content and course materials.   Consider using Story Maps and Experience Builder for content that you would like to build in the future!  The only thing lost with exporting out of a LMS is the interactive discussions, but if you use the story maps elements in your own LMS, you'll be able to recreate these discussions in short order. To easily navigate within the Story Maps collection, use the grid symbol on the left side, arrowed below, or the navigation arrows circled below.   Course Objectives: 1. Describe the components of a map (map elements). 2. Identify ways in which GIS, maps, and geo-visualizations are providing a common language and framework for communication of issues, events, or themes, and for solving problems. 3. Apply cartographic design principles such as symbology, color, projection, and classification methods to create, modify, and share maps. 4. Select and apply ethical and appropriate data model, map scale, map elements, symbolization, and color to produce maps that effectively communicate quantitative and qualitative geographic data. 5. Critically evaluate maps and visualizations. 6. Design professional quality maps, including map elements such as text, graphs, charts, images, and diagrams, employing cartographic principles. 7. Create maps, 3D scenes, and related content in a variety of formats (hard copy, digital, and web). 8. Identify how society influences mapping, and how mapping influences society, through the representation of data through mapping.  Thus, we discuss and work with ethical issues including location privacy, copyright, data quality, and more.   To get a quick sense of the objectives, plus my own philosophy, tips for success in the course, technical requirements, and how to work with the course structure, see the introductory story map, here.  Threaded through the course are these themes:  (1)  maps are not just reference documents, but are analytical tools, and (2) the map is not the end goal, but rather, enhanced understanding of the issue that the maps are tackling--climate, land use, population change, habitat, energy, transportation, and others.  Course Outline: Week 1: What is a map? Why do maps matter? Definitions, explanations, and examples of maps and GIS. Making maps with web mapping applications and considering how cartographic elements are used in those applications. Week 2: Representing data. Discussing geospatial data formats and data models. Mapping data and comparing web maps vs. web mapping applications. Week 3: Space, Place, and Time. Considering core elements of location, including coordinate systems, resolution, map projections, scale, and more. Doing hands-on work with space, place, time, contour lines, and change with maps and imagery. Week 4: Spatial analysis and spatial statistics. Discussion of topology, spatial analysis, geo-statistics, and examining additional maps. Performing spatial analysis including trace downstream, mean center, standard deviational ellipse, overlay, and more. Week 5: Map elements: Color, Type, Symbols. Deep dive into color, type, symbols, proportional symbol maps, typography, labeling, and other cartographic elements. Work with ColorBrewer, mapping points and polygons, labeling, and blending. Week 6: Generalization and Classification. Exploring and comparing methods of generalization and classification, including aggregation and map misrepresentations. Hands-on work with different types of symbols and classification on vector layers, including clustering, classification on raster layers, generalization, and more. Week 7: Choropleth and proportional symbols maps, labels, charts, and more. Discussion on thematic maps, including choropleth, proportional or graduated symbol maps, bivariate maps, diagrams, and mapping time. Hands-on work with tornado data in ArcGIS Online, and a Singapore mapping project in ArcGIS Pro. Week 8: Dot density, flow, cartograms, and cartographic design. Deep dive into dot density maps with examples, discussing pros and cons, flow maps past and present, cartograms, and map layouts. Hands-on work with making dot density maps, flow maps, and cartograms, and continued work on the Singapore project with a focus on map layout. Week 9: Deeper dive into symbols and design. The readings focus on symbolization considerations, including pictorial symbols, design comparisons, communications, design as planning and building, form, type, color, and texture, emotional impact, and putting it all together. The hands-on work focuses on creating and symbolizing a thematic map in ArcGIS Pro: Size, color, basemaps, exporting, and more. Week 10: Data quality, uncertainty, and ethics. The readings and discussion this week focus on how data quality is measured, why it matters, authoritative content, including examples of some truly 'bad' maps, management of error, legal aspects, and the ethics of mapping. The hands-on activities involve using fitness apps, a gigapixel image, mapping uncertain boundaries, and mapping uncertain line segments in a natural hazards setting and in a population setting. Week 11: Mapping Imagery. This week's readings and discussion focus on the types of imagery and how they are represented cartographically, including multi-bands, georeferencing, sharing, UAVs, other imagery, and consideration of audience, usability, functional requirements on maps, and utility. The hands-on activities include an examination of the Landsat Lens viewer, the Landsat explorer app, including cartographic considerations and usability reflections. Week 12: Surfaces and 3D Mapping. Readings and reflections this week include isoline maps, sampling, interpolation, isarithmic maps, 3D maps and visualizations, and space-time cubes. Hands-on work invites the student to map isolines across various themes and scales, work with 3D globes and 3D scenes with a cartographic consideration of each. Week 13: Mapping field data and communicating with maps. The focus this week is on five key forces in GIS and cartography, five key trends in these fields, multimedia means of communicating meaning in cartography including story maps and dashboards, and an examination of a further set of maps. The hands-on activities include creating a dashboard in ArcGIS Online, and visualizing expansion of public transportation in ArcGIS Pro, including 3D mapping elements. Week 14: The Future is now: UAVs, Lidar, Big Data, BIM, and More. The focus this week is on new mapping frontiers: Future directions in cartography. Dashboards, UAVs, Lidar, animations, visualizations, big data, interior space mapping, AI, art, new fields, GIS as a platform, and considering the human element. The hands-on work focuses on 3D mapping, Mars scale and visualizations, and work on the final project. Week 15: Discussion about resources to continue your learning after the course ends. Project work: Hands-on work this week is students working on their final projects. Week 16: Final words of encouragement as students turn in their final projects and present their work. ... View more