Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

• The group of countries with a small number of programs (less than 10) with highpercentage of GIS – Russia, Slovenia, Croatia, Finland, Romania etc.• The group of countries with a small number of Geography programs with lessthan 50 % of the departments, which are recognizing GIS as major field. Here areBulgaria, Italy, Switzerland etc.• The last group includes the countries, where GIS is still not recognized as majorsubject- Macedonia, Latvia, Albania, Moldova etc.From the above classification we can conclude that GIS is widely recognized asa major teaching and research area in European geography departments. However,if we compare the situation in Europe with this in USA, Europe is still behind theStates. In the reviewed 225 geography programs in USA, about 79 % of them declareGIS to be one of their major teaching and research areas.Do we need a different approach in teaching GI?Teaching GIS is not a simple task. Very often it requires the ability to offer abstractconcepts of digitial representation to students who are sometimes unfamiliar withcomputer science. On the other hand teaching GIS also requires the developmentof relationships between theoretical concepts. These concepts include space, locationanalysis and the spatial models with the capabilities and the features and the“language” of the different software packages. Very often the GIS education is notmore than GIS training, where “point and click” is the leading teaching approach.According to Rhind and Raper (2001) “there seem to be about 2 million GIS usersat present. About 2000 universities run courses on GIS and hundreds of other coursesare run by non-academic organisations, such as software vendors. Those takingthe courses come from a huge variety of backgrounds – environmentalists, peopleworking in local and central government, utility companies, the military and not-forprofitbodies. Yet, despite all this, GIS education and training is astonishingly similarworld-wide and – in our view – is mostly stuck on historical tram lines.” (Rhind andRaper, 2001, GIS: time for rethink, GeoEurope May 2001 10 (5), 47).Therefore the question “Do we need new approaches in teaching GIS?” isbecoming more and more significant. This is because the GIS and GI literacy arenot formed only by technical skills, but demands more than ever before basic spatialculture and understanding. A proper GIS education must place an emphasis on thescientific fundamentals of the technology and on the deployment of concepts andanalytical skills, rather than keyboard commands.When we are answering the question “Do we need a new approach in teachingGIS?”, we must take into account the role, which we think geography plays in GIS– as has already been pointed out, it is only the scientific fundamentals of GIS andthe technology that gives the framework. Despite the fact that, operations in GISappear to be largely technical in nature, one of the most important issues for the GISoperator or user is to be aware of the geographical concepts that inevitably underpinany GIS operation. This is what we believe differentiates GIS education from anyother IT discipline. Based on this, we can propose five basic principles, to expressour vision why the teaching GIS should be changed:129