Over the last three decades, GIS and geographic information science (GIScience) have advanced rapidly. Computing environments have become more powerful, software has become easier to use, datasets have become more accessible and diverse, and analytical techniques have evolved to flexibly handle a wider range of problems.
Spatial technology has also become part of daily life, and society has changed. As all this has happened, GIS researchers and practitioners have helped people sharpen their focus on how to respond to climate change and social and racial inequities. They have also accentuated the need to take a geographic approach when developing solutions to the world’s problems.
Given all this change, now is an opportune time to revisit what is taught in GIScience courses. Faculty from the University of California, Santa Barbara’s (UCSB) Center for Spatial Studies and Data Science have partnered with Esri to do just that. With support from a global advisory group of GIS experts, the team has initiated a discipline-wide conversation about how to transform GIScience education to incorporate recent technological advances and meet societal needs. New ideas—and a new curriculum—are already emerging from these conversations.
A Lighthouse That Guides
Participants in this endeavor are working together to identify the skills and competencies needed to solve problems using evolving GIS technologies and spatial data. The goal is to create an updated GIS curriculum that can be adapted to meet different educational needs and evolve with a constantly changing world.
Most GIScience programs in the United States—and, indeed, around the globe—are guided by a core curriculum that was developed in the 1990s. Led by the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, this core curriculum has been incredibly beneficial to GIS instruction because it aligned learning outcomes and minimized duplication efforts when refreshing curricula.
Modernizing this curriculum gives GIScience educators an opportunity to step back and think broadly about what essential concepts, pedagogical models, and learning outcomes students need to experience given shifts in technology, data, and society. An updated curriculum can be a lighthouse that guides instructors, researchers, and practitioners as they work to solve the world’s problems and educate the next generation of GIS developers and users.
Integrating the Community’s Voice
Reenvisioning core GIScience curricula is something that should involve the entire GIS community. The team working on this held several listening sessions and workshops with GIS professionals and academics over the past year. Many of these events happened at key GIS conferences, including meetings convened by the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, the 2024 Esri User Conference, and the Association of American Geographers’ annual meeting. Here are some ideas that came out of those meetings:
- GIS training needs to be focused on solutions. Experts in the field have indicated that what separates a GIScientist from a data scientist who works with geographic data is the ability to ask and answer geographic questions. An impactful GIScience curriculum needs to train students to implement a geographic approach, which includes asking spatial questions, leveraging the most advanced spatial data technology, and deploying outputs as solutions that can support decision-making. Geographers have long been leaders in taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the world. Advancing GIScience curricula means leaning into systems thinking, problem-solving, and other interdisciplinary methods of learning and doing.
- Ethics must be central. The GIS community has clearly indicated that ethics cannot be an afterthought or even an add-on component to courses. An evolved GIScience curriculum must put ethics, equity, and empathy at the center of its teachings. Lessons should show students how to ethically employ data and analysis, ensure equity among data and teams, and recognize that the use of GIS can both challenge and reinforce biases. Additionally, lessons in ethics need to be developed with input from groups that have typically been excluded.
- GIS users need to learn to design workflows to solve problems. Fundamental GIScience concepts remain important, and students will need to continue learning about raster and vector data models. But deep knowledge of GIS fundamentals is no longer required to use the software, so educators should rethink the order in which courses introduce GIS concepts and skills. Workflow design should move up in GIScience education. Students can now first learn how to develop GIS workflows that answer questions or solve problems, and this can be used to deepen students’ understanding of GIS tools and concepts. Teaching students how to design a workflow early in their GIS education also opens the door for them to learn programming skills, enabling them to automate data processing, conduct advanced analysis, and use new visualization techniques to communicate their findings. These skills are transferable across domains and allow GIS students to build expertise and effectively apply their knowledge and creativity.
- Emerging technologies need to be integrated into the curriculum. Wider availability of geographic data, advances in computing, and the proliferation of AI mean that the spatial analysis techniques available to those working in GIScience are expanding. These technological advances need to be integrated in GIScience curricula and introduced early. The rapid development of technology is also shortening the refresh cycle for course materials, so there is a growing need for open-source materials that instructors can adapt and share. Not only will having open educational resources benefit students by making GIS education more accessible, it will also allow instructors to integrate new knowledge into their courses at a faster pace.
Ten New Teaching Modules
This spring, the team will release an initial set of 10 teaching modules that will be open and available for use by all. These modules will include the theoretical, practical, and ethical lessons for a broadly applicable course in GIS. The audience for this first set of modules is an introductory college or university course, although the material can be leveraged for diverse learners at many levels.
The modules will be delivered in multiple formats. Compiled materials, which can be used in plug-and-play mode for lectures and hands-on learning events, will be available as ArcGIS StoryMaps stories. All parts of the curriculum—including lecture scripts, lecture videos, hands-on labs, and ethical exercises—will also be available via a website, so instructors can pick and choose which elements of the lessons best fit their own courses and modify the materials to meet their needs. The website will have a community function that will enable instructors to interact with user groups and provide feedback.
Since this project to evolve GIS curricula is just getting started, the team anticipates developing future modules that will focus on imagery and more specific application areas such as health, business, and the social sciences. But the success of this work relies on feedback from GIS and GIScience instructors, researchers, and practitioners. Please reach out to the Center for Spatial Studies and Data Science at admin@spatial.ucsb.edu with ideas about what else should be included in today’s GIS curriculum.
About the authors
Dr. Trisalyn Nelson
