1. What should we be teaching in introductory GIS & remote sensing courses? Barbara Tewksbury Hamilton College btewksbu@hamilton.edu Views from the Cutting Edge workshop Using GIS and Remote Sensing to Teach Geoscience in the 21 st Century

2. Summer 2010 workshop  Using GIS & Remote Sensing to Teach Geoscience in the 21 st Century  53 participants (½ geoscientists, ½ GIS/remote sensing professionals)  Emphasis on how to use GIS & remote sensing to teach geoscience  Especially how to do a better job by geoscience students

3. Workshop kickoff  Panel from government agencies & consulting industry  Asked to develop profile of the ideal student coming out of an introductory GIS or remote sensing course

4. The list of competencies  All lists included basic software competence & functional knowledge of fundamentals  All lists emphasized competences beyond nuts and bolts & basic knowledge  Independence  Critical thinking  Communication

5. Independence  Students should become  independent  self-sufficient  doggedly persistent

6. Components of independence  Find/obtain/download/prep datasets  Find and interpret metadata; deal with missing metadata  Troubleshoot coordinate system issues  Figure things out on their own using Help menus, books, online forums, etc.  Collect data in the field and integrate it with a GIS.  Design and carry out or manage an independent project.

7. Teaching independence  Give students “The List”; refer to it often  Always have students download & prep own data from original sources; teaches them how to:  Find data on their own  Deal with data format and metadata issues  Recognize and deal with CS issues

8. Teaching independence  Give students experience in figuring things out for themselves  Integrate use of Search, Help tools, Google search, online forums into exercises so that self-help becomes part of how students expect to work  Don’t let students give up easily  Caveat: remember that the software is complicated – can’t just toss students in and say “figure it out”

9. Teaching independence  Require students to develop a personal GIS portfolio  Not just a collection of course materials  Course materials organized, annotated, indexed to be a useful resource for the future

10. Critical thinking  Students should become  More than map makers  More than button-pushers

11. Components of critical thinking  Evaluate limitations of data  Schematically diagram an analysis & analyze impact on interpretations  Carry out hypothesis-driven analyses, interpret results, marshal evidence, and analyze uncertainties and limitations of interpretations  Work out how a technique could be used in other analyses with other data  Critically analyze existing maps

12. Teaching critical thinking  Get beyond the nuts & bolts  Emphasize critical analysis from the beginning of a course  Have students extend and apply in thought problems to give them practice in coming up with their own analyses

13. Communication  Identify the audience  Structure an appropriately targeted presentation  Be able to present to a variety audiences.  Create attractive, informative, clear, and cartographically correct maps.

14. Teaching communication  Have students write/present for audiences other than instructor  Have students critically evaluate other people’s written and oral presentation and reflect on how it will change their own.

15. Role of an original project  Addresses components of all three parts of the list (independence, critical thinking, and communication)  Most valuable if students have already practiced independence, critical thinking, communication  Doing X and then expecting Y is not a recipe for success!

16. Does it work?  My own class last spring  Student who initially had low tolerance for frustration taught himself HEC-RAS.  Two students taught themselves Network Analyst  One summer research student taught another using his portfolio

17. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTW orkshops/gis/outcomes.html