[Qgis-user] QGIS vs ArcGIS in Education and Practice

[Lene Fischer]

Hi all,
I´m working at University of Copenhagen, Forest an Landscape College.
Lecturing and working with GIS and GNSS.

GIS is on a tool – It´s the data and how we use the data that is important.

I was in the exact same situation 5 years ago. I had to decide a tool which would give me both the tools and the flexibility to work with.
35 % of my students use Mac and 2 % Linux and the rest Windows. At the time we worked in labs – but the Uni was about to change policy to ‘Bring your own device’ – So I had to change.

We have courses from 5 days to 9 weeks – and the tool is being used in classes all the way in the education. All of the students will use GIS in their later work, but only a few as full time GIS pro.

It is of great importance to tell the students to use the tool available. Look into the case and the data and then solve the problem with any tool. If you learn to drive in a Ford – you can also drive a VW or Toyota – The only problem is to Open the trunck or change oil ;-)

When this said – I use Open Source 95 % - That is the easiest. Here in Denmark OpenSource has become a platform used in both public administration, universities and private companies. And the in a mix together with proprietary software.

With the mix of data available today – I would focus to use the 5 days to introduce the students to vector, raster and point cloud data. Show them how to manipulate both the geographical objects and the attribute data.

And in a few years we might not use GIS as we do today – It might be SQL and Databases we should look into rather than worry about logo and names of products.

Regards
Lene Fischer
Associate Professor

University of Copenhagen
Department of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management
Forest and Landscape College
Nødebovej 77a
3480 Fredensborg
Denmark


DIR +45 35331579
MOB +45 40115084
lfi at ign.ku.dk<mailto:lfi at ign.ku.dk>
www.ign.ku.dk<http://www.ign.ku.dk/>


[cid:image001.gif at 01D2444C.0C2DB110]




Fra: Qgis-user [mailto:qgis-user-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] På vegne af Markus Weidenbach
Sendt: 15. december 2016 20:08
Til: qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
Emne: [Qgis-user] QGIS vs ArcGIS in Education and Practice

Dear List,

I was asked to give a 5 days international GIS training course at the university and proposed to do it with QGIS. The program leader finally insisted on doing it with ArcGIS arguing  that the students had better chances to find a job knowing ArcGIS rather than QGIS. This argumentation does not reflect my long professional experience as a GIS consultant at all!
But how can I proof that knowing QGIS is the better choice for young GIS professionals than ArcGIS (or at least that both systems are equally suited)?
Does anybody know any official numbers of GIS users worldwide or on the worldwide application of QGIS over ArcGIS?

I know the Master thesis from Boku Vienna (https://geoobserver.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/arcgis-vs-qgis/) but it is focused on a technical comparison of both systems only.
Also the link https://www.g2crowd.com/grid_report/documents/gis-winter-2016-report is not really helpful because it is based on some 40 reviews only and therefore not representative.
I really need to know some proven facts on the number of global QGIS users and renown companies using QGIS worldwide.

Thanks for your help in advance,
Markus

--
Dr. Markus Weidenbach
landConsult.de
Geographical Information Management
and Environmental Planning
D-77815 Bühl
Germany
e.mail see: http://landConsult.de
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-user/attachments/20161216/968233ff/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 2814 bytes
Desc: image003.jpg
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-user/attachments/20161216/968233ff/attachment.jpg>