Author:
Michael Crosby
Subject:
Forestry and Agriculture, Physical Geography
Material Type:
Activity/Lab, Student Guide, Syllabus
Level:
Community College / Lower Division
Tags:
  • LOUIS Course Transformation
  • louis-course-transformation
  • License:
    Creative Commons Attribution
    Language:
    English

    Introduction to GIS

    Overview

    The following is a series of guides for exercises to be used in an Introduction to GIS class.

    Introduction to GIS

    Introduction to Geographic Information Systems

    Michael K. Crosby

                The following guides and tutorial videos are meant to aid in the use of ESRI’s ArcGIS Pro software in an introductory Geographic Information Systems (GIS) course. The examples, guides, and videos all use openly/freely available data from government databases – and in one case (Data Editing), data that was created by the author. While some guides and examples show, briefly, other parts of the world and the United States, most focus on Louisiana, Lincoln Parish, Ruston, LA, and the campus of Louisiana Tech University. However, the guides are easily adaptable to anywhere and other instructors or professionals are free to create their own examples.

                An open textbook can also be utilized – Campbell and Shin (2011) have an open text, available at https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/essentials-of-geographic-information-systems. The example syllabus, from Louisiana Tech University includes readings from chapters in this book. The syllabus also shows guides in the schedule (in red). Louisiana Tech operates on a quarter system but awards semester hours – hopefully this allows for flexibility for those on a semester schedule. The students are given practical examinations approximately every third week and include a dataset and a series of questions or a problem to solve. This time might just as well be allocated to exercise completion if other instructors see the need for such a change.

                There are several other resources available that go beyond an introductory course. Some, developed for ArcGIS Desktop software by Manny Gimmond, were an inspiration for this work using ArcGIS Pro. Dr. Gimmond has since started developing a site for ArcGIS Pro tutorials as well. Those interested in those resources can find them at https://mgimond.github.io/.

                The idea behind creating these resources was to have an open-access option for students (or others) to use beyond their initial, and perhaps only, course in GIS. The guides are accompanied by a series of short-duration videos and topics are presented by more traditional lectures (PDF slides are available); the videos are captioned. If there are mistakes in the guides or with video captions – technical or otherwise – please contact me via email (mcrosby@latech.edu) and I will work to correct them. Hopefully, these resources prove useful to you and/or your students.