Why the Young Professional Should Care About and Become Involved with GIS Education

[JosephKerski]

This article explains why you, the YPN professional, should care about education, beyond your own educational journey.  Why should things happening in schools and universities regarding GIS matter to you, and how can you get involved? 

GIS has existed for nearly 60 years.  Since its inception, people have wanted to learn more about GIS.  Because of this desire, the development of educational resources—lessons, tutorials, books, and other ways to learn about GIS, has been occurring for nearly 60 years as well.   Educational institutions (schools, community, technical, and tribal colleges, and universities) have long partnered with GIS software companies, nonprofit organizations, professional associations, and government agencies to advance the teaching and learning surrounding GIS.  Beginning in the late 1980s, GIS has steadily advanced at all levels in education from primary and secondary schools, to colleges and universities.  Today, GIS is taught in nearly every university and college in the world.  It is taught in individual courses, certificate programs, degree programs, and in hybrid, face-to-face, and fully online environments.  It is also used as a key research tool and in campus facility administration.

GIS Across Disciplines

The expansion of GIS in education that I describe above is not limited to GIS or GIScience courses and programs.  In fact, the fastest educational growth today in GIS is across an increasing diversity of disciplines, including business, earth and environmental science, geography, economics, mathematics, civil engineering, computer science, health, planning, and more.  It is becoming infused in university and college programs on sustainability, climate, resiliency, and data science.  Why?  Instructors increasingly recognize GIS as a tool that employers require and hence will increase the marketability and employability of their students.  Instructors recognize the systems thinking and holistic perspectives that GIS gives students in increasingly interdisciplinary campus initiatives such as the ATLAS institute at the University of Colorado and the data science program at the University of North Carolina Charlotte.  Nearly every university highlights data literacy and data visualization on their web pages and in their mission statements:  Using GIS engages students in working with a large volume and wide variety of data:  Accessing it, managing it, analyzing it, communicating with it, and being critical of it, as I explain here in this article about data fluency and as I write about often, including ethical issues surrounding the use of data, here.

Moreover, instructors increasingly value GIS as a teaching tool and methodology to foster the spatial perspective and critical thinking.  This is true across the natural sciences as well as in social sciences, and it is spreading to fine arts and humanities, as I describe in this example.  These increasingly diverse sets of instructors see GIS as fostering a ‘care-for-the-Earth’ ethic, which can powerfully engage students in meaningful and relevant issues from local to global scale.  These include invasive species, historical events, water quality, noise and air pollution, natural hazards, climate impacts, urban greenways, business and economic health, energy, and many more.  GIS is used as an analytical tool in problem-based learning environments to study change over space and time.   GIS is used daily by researchers in educational institutions, studying everything from retail trade to water quality, or more comprehensively, from A to Z – agriculture, astronomy, architecture, and anthropology, to zoology—and everything in between.   The spatial data in GIS is used as a rich body of instructional content, such as the data in the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, and in ArcGIS Hub sites and other data libraries, for teaching and studying history, biology, economics, and many other disciplines.  Even primary school instructors are using the interactive maps in ArcGIS Online in such accessible and engaging tools as the National Geographic MapMaker to teach about biomes, population change, landforms, and weather.  

Also important in educational institutions is the use of GIS in administration—campus facility management, campus safety, managing alumni networks, and more:  From getting people into and out of the basketball or football stadium safely, to taking care of all of the trees on campus, managing the campus electrical and fiber optic grid, and in other ways.  GIS helps a campus save energy and costs and become a sustainable and safe place for all.

The Challenge

Despite decades of advancement, there is still a lack of awareness of the educational benefits of teaching, learning, and administration with GIS.  Unless you are speaking to environmental scientists, geographers, or GIS faculty or students on a typical campus, chances are, you will still get blank stares about GIS.  You may even get questions such as “Why do maps still matter in  21st Century schools and universities?” and “Haven’t all the maps been made?”, or “Why do we need mapping and data courses when  I have Google Maps on my phone?”  Perhaps because maps are so well embedded in our easily accessible weather apps, in the ways we navigate across campus or to the public library, in our fitness apps, in our package tracking, and in our ride-share apps that people do not associate the mapping technologies they use day-to-day with a discipline.  Perhaps it is because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature and the applicability of GIS that makes it hard to “find a single home” in educational institutions.  Perhaps it is because we have not purposefully and rigorously taught spatial thinking in our primary and secondary schools.  Perhaps because some geography is still taught as “memorizing place names, imports, and exports”.  Or perhaps it is because of all of those reasons.  Thus I encourage you to be ready to articulate "why where matters" and the value of GIS to anyone you meet at a moment's notice.  Chances are that in your workplace, you will be required to articulate this, so be prepared!

Teaching With a Professional Toolset

Most tools used in schools, colleges, and universities are part of “educational software”; that is, software created to be used for instruction.  There is value in using educational software, to be sure.  Consider however that when an instructor teaches with GIS, they are teaching with a professional tool intended to be used to make decisions, rather than something created specifically for education.  It is more challenging to teach with a professional tool:  The instructor has to learn enough of a professional tool to feel confident in teaching with it, and also must keep up with it as it rapidly evolves, which is especially the case with GIS.  But every instructor I have met over the past 30 years has confirmed that using GIS in instruction is definitely worth the extra effort.  Their students, such as Roxana Ayala, inspired and empowered to be positive change agents, are living examples of the fruits of these efforts.  Like many instructors, I have been using GIS in education for many decades and am just as excited about using it now as when I started.  In my opinion, today is the most exciting time of all to be using GIS, with the new story maps tools, apps such as Landsat Explorer, field tools, analytics in the cloud, and the widening array of interest.

Advancing GIS in Education

Way back in 2011, I wrote an article for ArcUser on Why Geography Education Matters:  https://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0611/why-geography-education-matters.html.    The reasons I give in the article for why this matters include citing student analysis about the whys of where, and questions such as, "how is the Earth changing?", and “Should the Earth be changing in these ways?" and "What can I do about it?”   In fact, I submit that spatially-infused education is needed more now than ever before—far beyond 2011, to 2024, and beyond!

Who is responsible for the advancing GIS in education?   One group dedicated to this goal is the Esri education program team, which was founded in 1992:  For over 30 years, we have been supporting schools and higher education in promoting spatial thinking through geotechnologies in teaching, learning, research, and in campus facilities.   Yet we cannot do it alone!   We partner with institutions, their deans, provosts, faculty, and campus facility administrators.  We work closely with professional associations such as the GeoTech Center, URISA, AAG, the Decision Sciences Institute, the Society for Conservation GIS, and UCGIS in higher education, and NCSS, NCGE, NSTA, ISTE, (social studies, geography, science, and technology, respectively) and other discipline-specific associations in primary and secondary education, to advance GIS.  We host exhibits and workshops at events and conferences, actively serve on advisory boards, make dozens of campus visits and conduct hundreds of online workshops and presentations in any given year, create curricular materials, author research and instructional articles and articles highlighting their programs, make the ArcGIS software free or low cost, write guidelines and best practices documents, and connect educators with each other across networks.  

Faculty are enthusiastic about GIS. However, they have limited time to evangelize about its benefits, and all are extremely busy with their own teaching and research.  Furthermore, educational institutions are in a continual state of change and reinvention, even before COVID.  Our team at Esri seeks to support GIS across all schools, colleges, and universities, in all disciplines, worldwide.  But because tens of thousands of schools, colleges, and universities exist worldwide, we are challenged with selecting those campuses and programs that actively seek our help and/or those with whom GIS education can gain a multiplier effect from. 

Therefore, my answer to “Who is responsible for the advancing GIS in education?” is – all of us.  And why does this matter?  We need to keep advancing GIS in education to ensure that future positive change agents will graduate with spatial thinking and geotechnology skills to build a more resilient and sustainable future for all of us.

How You Can Be Involved

There is one group who could lend an enormous boost to the GIS education effort—YOU!  The Young Professionals Network.  Why should you, the busy young professional that you are, care about what is happening in GIS education and why you should support it?  A few key reasons are:

• You have kids, or you know people with kids, and you care about them.
• You were a kid once and you remember what frustrations and triumphs you had in your own school journey.
• You have an alma mater university and school that you care about.
• You have a neighborhood school that you are interested in partnering with.
• You care about getting passionate and wonderful employees hired at your organization.
• You care about the future of the geospatial industry and the people in it.
• You care about the future of our planet!

You in YPN who are reading this essay could greatly increase the adoption of GIS in teaching and research by:

• Being a “geomentor” to your local school or alma mater university, where you offer to give a series of workshops or presentations, put together a web map of data layers for an educator, to help them when they get “stuck” in a GIS workflow or lesson, and in other ways.
•  Host a face-to-face or virtual GIS Day event (www.gisday.com).
• Following the advice of YPN author Gina Girgente to join college clubs and academic organizations, finding your own calling, and building your confidence in speaking to others about the value of GIS.
• Following the advice of my colleague Rosemary Boone to become a YPN Ambassador to enhance your leadership skills so that you can better articulate the value of GIS across disciplines in education.
• Have your 30-second to 2-minute elevator speech ready to go, while on the bus, airplane, in a conference, or in an actual elevator, articulating what GIS is, why it matters, and why we need to be teaching with it and about it.  Use my set of elevator speeches here for some inspiration but make it your own voice, making it authentic by charting your own journey to your story.

In many ways, with your expertise in and passion for GIS, your voice in GIS in education could be even more effective than the voice of me and my teammates.  You have unique things to share that my others in the geospatial profession do not.  Please consider being that voice. 

How to get started

How could you start connecting to the world of education?   The best place to begin is my colleague Charlie Fitzpatrick’s updated geomentoring advice. The first piece of advice is that a relationship needs to be established between you and any potential educator.  These take time and effort to establish and maintain, and follow the same model as other relationships:  See what you have in common with someone, and how you can help them.  It could be a former professor of yours or their colleague, or your kids’ teacher, or someone else.  Some potential mentees might contact you, but it is more likely that you as the mentor will need to seek them out. Because of that, focus on seeking adults, not minors; educators might let you work with primary and secondary students once they are comfortable with who you are and what you know, but even if not, you can help the educator.   

You could assemble a data set or a web map, explain how to classify or project a data set, or assist in other ways.  Exploring potential engagement is easier when a connection already exists. Look for educators in your circle, or your circle's circle: family, friends, neighbors, work, religious institution, clubs, and so on.  Look for someone who teaches earth science, environmental science, geography, or history. Ask what they do, and if they use maps or imagery.  Interested educators can be found at all student grade levels and in all disciplines.  Find out what the educator knows and seeks:  The key I believe is to practice a great deal of  active listening, rather than starting with your own agenda.  Does the school have access to software? Do they have ArcGIS logins in place? Do they know the basics and want to go farther?  Next, skim these resources and join the GeoMentor group on the Esri Community. 

I look forward to hearing about your successes, challenges, and questions in this area!

--Joseph Kerski