National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

An outline of the GIS Core Curriculum for Technical Programs, organized by topic, is presented with hyperlinks to each unit's material on eScholarship. Note that hyperlinks are only active if the PDF file is downloaded.

This introduction provides a historical overview of the GIS Core Curriculum for Technical Programs. It describes the working group and initial work session where a framework for the curriculum was developed, and it includes a task list outlining the topics originally intended for the curriculum.

This unit presents (1) a case study and (2) a bibliographic resource for GIS in the medical field. The case study illustrates the use of a GIS to monitor and analyze spatial patterns of physicians' multiple locations. This case highlights data location, acquisition and assessment, join and relational operators, geocoding and distance calculations, and standard query language.

This unit discusses the planning and execution of labeling operations with the primary intent of creating a quality finished product. Through an example application—converting hard-copy US Geological Survey topographic quadrangles into Digital Line Graph (DLG) data sets—the labeling process is described, including project planning, execution, quality control and techniques to maximize efficiency and minimize errors.

This unit presents a general overview of metadata, its potential uses and relevant vocabulary. Techniques for finding, using and interpreting complicated metadata are discussed and approaches for efficiently creating and cataloging simple metadata presented.

This unit introduces digital GIS data libraries, including their uses, types, design considerations and validation. An application example from the area of water resources management is presented along with examples of generalized technical specifications for vector data.

This unit gives an overview of the buffer operation, including its potential uses, basic vocabulary, parameters, and implementation. An example application from natural and archaeological resource management in a national park is presented, along with illustrations of different types of buffers and list of useful related operations in ARC/INFO.

This unit provides the instructor with a simple overview of GIS. After learning the material covered in this unit, the student should be able to provide a general definition for GIS; list some of the application areas of GIS; provide examples of how GIS is used; and describe topics that will be learned in an introductory study of technical GIS.

This unit introduces some of the uses of digital terrain data, the types of elevation data available and how to obtain them. Through examples and discussion it presents examples of data sources and formats, software for viewing and processing elevation data, and a comprehensive list of data and software resources.

The Core Curriculum for Technical Programs (CCTP) concentrates on providing course content assistance for instructors. It is intended to support a full range of courses that would be taught at a 2-year college. This guide is designed to provide a quick overview for the GIS instructor on the use of the CCTP resources to create GIS course modules and design GIS courses.