Practical Component

Probably the largest difficulty in organizing a GIS class involves the practical component. Instructors must face unlimited technical possibilities almost always with much less resources (time, money, computers, space, assistants...) than really needed.

Over the past twenty years, I have tried to keep up with current hardware and software, but the most effective teaching often comes from using well-understood software with unambitious data sources. Less is often more.

Raster versus Vector

The first major decision involves the eternal raster and vector division. As any in the GIS research community will know, Nick Chrisman had strong opinions about the choice between raster and vector technology. If there ever was a 'debate' (though it never happened in a classical debate format...), I was a partisan of the vector side. Yet, I have taught my introductory GIS course with raster-based software for many years.

Why?

When I started teaching in 1982, there was no vector based software that could do all the functions to cover the full ranges of analysis in the book. The ODYSSEY software (that I had helped to construct at Harvard lab for Computer Graphics) did a fine job of polygon overlay, but didn't even have a buffer operation. Dana Tomlin's MAP package had many limitations, but it did provide a way to demonstrate a wide range of analytical functions. I started teaching using a version of MAP running on a PDP-11 in timesharing mode. Like any instructor, I can get stuck in a rut, and reasons that applied in 1982 are much less relevant fifteen years later.

Vector software systems, once a minority, gained rapid hegemony of the GIS marketplace by the late 1980s. The analytical capabilities expanded to fit a full range of functions, though more slowly and less elegantly than some would have liked. Yet, the full-function packages ran on expensive computers, and the licenses were expensive. As the software matured, the cost of hardware dropped dramatically, but somehow the software that used to run on 'big' machines with a whole megabyte of memory now requires much more. There is an eternal spiral, and any teaching lab is fated to obsolescence.

More importantly, the full-function vector packages are typically quite complex. Much of the effort must be expended on learning the interface, the database environment, and other elements that do not demonstrate the analytical concept that I think should come first. Ideally, a second course should provide a full tour of the top-end software. Of course, some institutions cannot afford two courses. It is certainly possible to design a course that introduces GIS analysis through vector software, even using the most coplicated packages. In such a course, you may need to devote lecture time to explanations of the software in addition to the lectures described in this manual. The practical component of the class may not arrive at the more complex parts of the toolkit, such as the comprehensive operations in Chapter 8.

Examples of Exercises

A course should provide an integrated sequence, where the lectures, the readings, and the practical component are tightly connected. It is quite important for students to keep up with all the elements. There are three types of assignments, noted in the schedule: practical exercises with the software package, case study discussions, and a project.

Until quite recently, I used MAP II, a Macintosh-based raster package derived from Tomlin's MAP software. The exercises used in this sequence are provided in this site.
MAP II exercises

Recently, I moved to using ArcView 3.0. This software offers some exposure to a vector environment (though limited in terms of analysis) plus a raster analysis package (SpatialAnalyst). In the first year I still had to cope with a prerelease copy of the software and plenty of extraneous woes. The exercises for this initial year are provided below, though I plan to redevelop them eventually.
ArcView 3.0 exercises Ex. 1 Introduction to ArcView Spatial Analyst
Ex. 2 Map Comparisons and Overlay
Ex. 3 Buffers and neighborhood operations
Ex. 4 Surface operations and flow (Network Analyst)
Ex. 5 Understanding vector attributes and transformations (no computer, paper!)

Ex. 6 Digitizing exercise: create polygons on top of a scanned map. In adopting these exercises to your course, you should custom them to the database you select. I have tried a lot of approaches, but having a single instructional database eases course management enormously.
The practical exercises provide a way to acquire skills in using ArcView 3.0 and to apply the course concepts to real data. There will be penalties for late submissions; do not tarry.

Project assignment

The project is intended to provide a more developed sequence of understanding an application through direct experience. The simplest model for a project involves a relatively realistic application of ArcView to a particular problem. Other models can be negotiated. Projects should be done by a team to ease access to the computer and to share part of the work around. Teams can be more explicit in making decisions, while individuals might do something and justify it later. A team can consist of two or three students (or even more). The group can be based on shared ideas, or mixed skills, or random selection. The project is marked by a set of milestones to ensure that things operate smoothly.

Form project teams (come to discussion meeting with a team and some ideas.)
Submit project outline (identify data needed and consider how to get it)
Intermediary review: the team should have explored data and developed a complete plan of attack. This the point when unfeasible projects should be detected and rediverted to a cognate problem. Implementation plan due.
Oral presentation in last lab session; written report due on last day of class, finalist 'awards'.

With group projects, the instructor must take some care to give flexibility for creative group work, while ensuring that groups share their work load reasonably equitably. As always there are no guaranteed methods to balance these concerns.

Case Study assignments: general rules

Case study events consist of a section meeting when students will discuss a range of different examples on a given theme. The section size, being set by the size of our computer lab at 19 is fairly effective for discussion events. All students should be prepared to discuss their selected part of the case study. The idea is to focus attention on a set of related (often disagreeing) sources (such as articles or reports), and to provide a basis for discussion. Each case study is formed on a common theme, with a number of sources presenting diverse applications. Each discussion is organized differently, using a variety of models I have developed over the past fifteen years.

Map Combination (Fall 95) based on paper reading mostly
Comparing Applications (Fall 95) some web based material
Data Hunt event (all web based)
Institutional and Implementation Issues [Fall 95] (some web pointers no longer functional, sorry)

The combination of exercises (to introduce the technology), case studies (to discuss it and consider alternatives), and a project to tie all the pieces together, an introductory course on GIS can be firmly rooted in practical matters.