Syllabus
This syllabus was designed in 2006 for an advanced course that was only delivered online. The course is intended to introduce GIS students to the theory and operation of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS, which includes GPS) and Coordinate Geometry (COGO) tools for entering survey data. This course was last delivered in this form in 2014.
Exams
There are a number of different exam formats that I use in the face-to-face and online versions of courses. In general, I try to have sections of multiple-choice/true and false, short answer and long answer questions on my final exams. The multiple choice/T&F questions are used to provide a rapid assessment of the breadth of the student’s knowledge, the long answer questions provide a way to assess the depth of the student’s knowledge, and the short answer questions allow some of the depth of their knowledge to be assessed in a relatively short time, which is helpful on exams when time is limited.
The exams for the face-to-face program are delivered on paper. The online exams are delivered in the Course Management System (CMS). When the Online program was developed, we wrestled with the question of whether we wanted to have remote proctors, but the difficulty of finding somebody trustworthy, compensating them appropriately, and dealing with different cultural norms led us to abandon this idea. Instead, we explicitly made the exams “open book,” but in doing so made the questions novel and challenging enough that cheating would be unlikely.
- Geog 521 Face-to-Face Final Exam with Answers
- Geog 521 Online Final Exam with Answers (screen shots from CMS)
Because the online courses run on a compressed timetable (8 weeks), I don’t generally have midterm exams in these classes. Instead, because I want to ensure that students do have a minimum set of technical skills, all classes, both face-to-face and online feature a practical lab exam.
Assignments
Two of my initiatives for 2019 were to revise labs using local data, where useful and feasible, and to revise labs for use with ArcGIS Pro. Geog 521 (General Spatial Analysis) Lab 5 was originally written by Dr. Paul Zandbergen for ArcGIS Desktop. I revised this lab to work with ArcGIS Pro, and replaced the data in Part B with local data for a controversial ski resort proposal at Jumbo Glacier, which has been in the news for many years.
Online courses present some challenges for authors of lab assignments. The following lab assignment for Geog 525 (Global Positioning Systems and Survey Analysis) was the first in a series of two labs. In the first lab, they planned a GPS survey expedition, and in the second, they carried it out virtually using a recorded track broadcast from our server computer.
These labs required some imagination on the part of both me and the students — students must imagine working on Vancouver Island, even though they have never been to the location. Marking this assignment requires some latitude, since students in different parts of the world tend to imagine that their local vegetation and climate patterns apply to Vancouver Island, which has implications for overland travel and GPS reception.
Maps
I teach my students that a well-designed map is like having a direct line to the thoughts of the map designer. The right map can communicate volumes of information very rapidly. Depending on the purpose of the map, this may mean that the map is simple or complex.
The following is a very basic map used for my Ph.D. showing the scheduled locations where a data collection station was set up. Here, the aim is to provide a simple, easy to use map that quickly and effectively points park users (who are familiar with the locations shown) to where a booth may be found.
Colliery Dam Park Booth Map. Sometimes the simplest map is the best.
Of course, maps may also convey large amounts of information for specialist users. This is one of the maps that I produced for Blue Grouse Winery as part of the viticulture exercise that was conducted with Ukrainian GIS instructors in 2014 (detailed PDF file).
Map of diurnal heating and nocturnal cold air flows at Blue Grouse Winery.
Diagrams
When teaching ArcGIS, diagrams showing the functioning of various user interfaces are frequently helpful. Because of the complexity of the tools, it is critical to design the graphic as cleanly as possible.
Layout of buttons in the ArcGIS attribute table User Interface
When designing diagrams for translation, creating call-outs in PowerPoint works quite well. That allows the graphic to be designed in English and then passed on to the translators. Here, a screenshot of the Russian language ArcGIS user interface is labelled in English, and then this is translated into Ukrainian. Unfortunately, there is no Ukrainian localisation of ArcGIS available, which is why the Russian version was used.
Translation of diagrams into Ukrainian
When possible, I try to use photos, screen shots, clean lines, and bold colours to make the diagrams as easy as possible to understand.
Diagram of Local and Global Server Concepts for Ukrainian Spatial Data Infrastructure
PowerPoint Slides
This is a slide from “The Place in GIS Project,” an internal faculty presentation in September 2017. This presentation discussed the analytical work that I was doing for my Ph.D. research. The slide above showed how I developed three-dimensional surfaces based on features that survey participants identified.
Although PowerPoint can be terrible when misused, it offers some important benefits when teaching technology classes. It allows screenshots and animations to be displayed and discussed in the classroom. Without this ability, it would be nearly impossible to communicate some concepts, so presentation software will likely always be present in a GIS classroom. Keeping the number of bullets on slides to a bare minimum and then filling in the missing details around the topics seems to be a reasonable compromise that keeps classes interactive and lively.