UC Santa Barbara

In the 1990s, a core curriculum for GIScience was developed to provide a lighthouse for the field. Given massive developments in the field, our goal is to lead the GIScience community in creating a modern and open-source curriculum for today’s GIScientist, through a project titled “The Guide to the Geographic Approach.” Here, we outline resources generated from the first phase of the project. It includes a list of modern Geographic Information Science (GIS) competencies, open modules organized around GIS workflows and applications, and supporting instructor materials. The approach to modern GIScience curriculum development and delivery is motivated by a shared understanding that materials should be co-developed by the community of GIScientists, be open source, center ethics, be distinguishable from data science through learning focused on spatial applications and workflows and build practical skills through hands-on activities using the latest technology. With the aim of providing content that addresses a set of modern GIScience competencies, we introduce the first phase of curriculum materials. Using an example module, we describe curricular components of each module and outline how materials can be used, as a complete curriculum or in their component parts.