Essential competences for GIS learning in higher education: a synthesis of international curricular documents in the GIS&T domain

Abstract

Competence-oriented restructuring of curricular content for the study of geographic information system (GIS) in higher education has become a primary educational enterprise in Europe due to the Bologna Reform. Although there are different international curricular documents for outcome-based design of learning activities within the geographic information science and technology domain, it has not yet been clarified which competences should be considered essential components of a university-level course of study in GIS. Our content analysis of those curricular documents demonstrates that there are three dimensions of core competences foundational to the study of GIS in higher education, which are GIS knowledge and skills, spatial thinking, and problem-solving.

Keywords:

• competence
• Europe
• GIS
• GIS&T BoK
• GTCM
• higher education

Notes

1. According to The Bologna Declaration of 1999, European countries have agreed to create a “Europe of Knowledge”, enabling its citizens to face the challenges of globalization and international competitiveness in the third millennium by strengthening scientific and technological developments as well as fostering a common social-cultural space.

2. Content analysis evolved in the first decades of the twentieth century as an instrument to statistically interpret textual data originating from mass media. Today, this method of systematic, rule-based, and objective text analysis is used in studies using quantitative, qualitative, or mixed approaches in various fields, such as communication, journalism, and health research (see Hsieh & Shannon, 2005; Neuendorf, 2002).

3. Tuning Educational Structures in Europe (TUNING) was a university-driven project to implement the Bologna process. One major project outcome was the development of a set of 30 generic competences for HE teaching and learning processes, classified as instrumental, interpersonal, and systemic competences (see Gonzalez & Wagenaar, 2008).

4. The Geomatiker is one of 350 state-approved occupations (Ausbildungsberufe) in Germany. Together with the surveying technician, it is part of a newly created occupational group of GIS&T. Its three-year apprenticeship qualifies a student to become a process-, problem-, and quality-oriented spatial data manager, a position that replaces the “classic” occupation of cartography.

5. The spread covers the following disciplines: geography (17%), geoinformatics (13%), ecology and environmental studies (11%), and geoscience (10%), geodesy/surveying (8%), landscape planning (5%), landscape architecture (5%), agricultural science (5%), forestry science (4%), urban and regional planning (4%), and other. This calculation is based on the data available at Geoinformatics Service University Rostock (2011).

6. The survey (n = 133) was carried out by the GfGI early in 2010 among university faculty and staff (60%), professionals in the private sector (28%), and public authorities (12%). The online questionnaire was based on a five-point ordinal scale from “very important (1)” to “fully unimportant (5)”. Results are available in detail at http://www.gfgi.de/auswertung_umfrage_kerncurriculum.pdf (accessed November 2011).