[OSGeo-Edu] Tracking a GIS Core Curriculum

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

On Tue, 2009-09-15 at 09:56 -0400, Charlie Schweik wrote: 
> There is the NCGIS GIScience core curriculum here: 
> http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/giscc/ (dated 2000).
> I haven't read the AAG book but it looks interesting.
> 
> But I think our group should NOT try and duplicate these kinds of 
> efforts. What I think we should focus on is *developing a core curriculum
> for, perhaps, a "GIS Certificate in Open Source GIS*," to begin.

Thanks Charlie,  The NCGIS curriculum was also in the dust at the back
of my mind.

Just to make sure we're on the same page - I'm suggesting we build on
top of existing curricula by focusing on tutorials and lessons that
apply theory using open source GIS applications/tools but tied back
directly to aspects of these curricula.

Are you suggesting that we build on top of these existing ones or start
from scratch with our own?  

I could see that a few modules in such a certificate for open source GIS
would require us to have some general "open source" focused teaching
that we might have to create, but can we still re-use existing component
from elsewhere, right?  At least as a framework for building our open
source specific teaching?

My mental challenge here is that I could see that our curriculum would
be the same as any GIS certificate curriculum, only the labs and
applications would use open source tools.  Of course, it could also be
branded as an open source GIS certificate, but perhaps that's a fine
line at this point?  Are there other perspectives on this I'm missing?

> I think this is a natural next step for our group, and as you suggest, 
> we could potentially organize or link course material in our database to 
> a curriculum
> structure we as a group come up with. -- I think this is a* great 
> collaborative goal for this next year*.

Maybe this answers my above questions.  Do these next steps make sense?

1. Review existing curriculum.  
2. Copying the structures from existing curricula as appropriate
(hopefully verbatim so educators can tie directly back)
3. Identify holes that we'd need to fill (hopefully only a few)
4. Collate or create material for each section.
5. Bundle it all up, etc...

Thanks for discussion!

Tyler