National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

An outline of the GIS Core Curriculum for Technical Programs, organized by topic, is presented with hyperlinks to each unit's material on eScholarship. Note that hyperlinks are only active if the PDF file is downloaded.

This introduction provides a historical overview of the GIS Core Curriculum for Technical Programs. It describes the working group and initial work session where a framework for the curriculum was developed, and it includes a task list outlining the topics originally intended for the curriculum.

The Core Curriculum for Technical Programs (CCTP) concentrates on providing course content assistance for instructors. It is intended to support a full range of courses that would be taught at a 2-year college. This guide is designed to provide a quick overview for the GIS instructor on the use of the CCTP resources to create GIS course modules and design GIS courses.

This unit’s overview of Global Positioning System (GPS) data includes sections on GPS equipment and definitions, accuracy considerations, project preplanning, collecting and correcting data and exporting data. Procedures for a sample implementation, using GPS to collect utility data, are described using Pathfinder Office software to create a new project and data dictionary, transferring the data dictionary to a datalogger, using Quick Plan software to preplan data collection, using the ProXL Datalogger to collect data, downloading the data to a PC, differentially correct the data using base station data, and exporting the results to ArcView.

This unit describes the general process of on-screen digitizing and its potential uses. Through several task-based examples it illustrates how to update and create new map layers with on-screen digitizing and how to register a scanned image.

This unit describes the concept and some applications of Map Algebra, in which GIS data layers are used as variables in mathematical expressions. Examples using raster and vector data are presented with many illustrations.

This unit discusses applications, design elements, media and the creation process of printed geographic products including maps, tables and charts. Conventional map elements such as title, scale bar, legend, etc. are described and illustrated with examples, and different map types and their typical application are discussed.

This unit is designed to assist the technical GIS educator in identifying the computer skills required for GIS tasks. Basic computer literacy skills are presented as a foundation for technical GIS computing skills. The latter are organized into several categories (e.g. 'Systems', 'Programming', 'Databases'), with lists of skills at different levels of achievement (Awareness, Competency, Mastery). 

This unit is concerned with the task of locating demographic data, including data describing the socioeconomic characteristics of the population. Information about the age, ethnicity, gender, income, housing condition and other socioeconomic variables is considered. The scope of this unit is to provide guidelines and suggestions to identify demographic datasets and evaluate whether the data set can be used within a GIS effectively.

This unit introduces digital GIS data libraries, including their uses, types, design considerations and validation. An application example from the area of water resources management is presented along with examples of generalized technical specifications for vector data.