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.

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 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 strategies, considerations, media and software for presenting a GIS project. Data types, file formats and methods for capturing graphics from GIS software are described and a generalized process for creating presentations is outlined.

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.

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 presents a general overview of metadata, its potential uses and relevant vocabulary. Techniques for finding, using and interpreting complicated metadata are discussed and approaches for efficiently creating and cataloging simple metadata presented.

This unit identifies the fundamentals of surface derivatives that those familiar with GIS should know. It describes some methods by which they are calculated and measured, introduces ways in which they are used in GIS analysis and identifies some challenges to using them.

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.