Developing a curriculum in geographic information systems: the national center for geographic information and analysis core curriculum project

Abstract

We describe a major effort by the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) to develop teaching materials in support of courses in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The project is motivated by the current high level of demand for GIS professionals and by the need to distinguish between software training on the one hand, and education in the intellectual and conceptual basis of GIS on the other. The teaching materials were assembled from contributions by many GIS educators and tested in a number of institutions worldwide. The activities described in this article were followed by an evaluation programme during 1989–90 and culminated in the release of a revised version in the summer of 1990.