National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

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.

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.

In this unit students will learn how to assess the needs requirements and evaluate options in order to implement and maintain a GIS laboratory and how to plan and manage GIS project work. A generalized list of questions to ask when beginning any project and list of tasks are presented to illustrate a common approach to project management.

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.

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 presents (1) a case study and (2) a bibliographic resource for GIS in the medical field. The case study illustrates the use of a GIS to monitor and analyze spatial patterns of physicians' multiple locations. This case highlights data location, acquisition and assessment, join and relational operators, geocoding and distance calculations, and standard query language.

This unit gives an overview of the buffer operation, including its potential uses, basic vocabulary, parameters, and implementation. An example application from natural and archaeological resource management in a national park is presented, along with illustrations of different types of buffers and list of useful related operations in ARC/INFO.

This unit discusses the three major methods of communicating about and distributing GIS products: advertising, presenting demonstrations and providing training and support. It explains the basic advertising principals of AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) and lists common questions to address when planning a marketing campaign, product demonstration, trade show exhibition or training and support.

This unit provides the instructor with a simple overview of GIS. After learning the material covered in this unit, the student should be able to provide a general definition for GIS; list some of the application areas of GIS; provide examples of how GIS is used; and describe topics that will be learned in an introductory study of technical GIS.

This unit describes the process of address matching, which allows the GIS user to convert postal addresses and/or zip codes to geographic coordinates. Example applications from the medical field, government, marketing and distribution are given, along with practical examples with step-by-step instructions.