University Consortium for
Geographic Information Science
www.ucgis.org

In this issue

Officers
Winter 2006
Issue 1 Vol 8
 
Education Committee News
GI S&T Body of Knowledge in press
click here for pdf version

by David DiBiase, chair

The Association of American Geographers (AAG) has agreed to publish the Geographic Information Science & Technology Body of Knowledge (GIS&T BoK). Following approval by the UCGIS Board of Directors, the editorial team delivered a complete manuscript to AAG on February 25. The monograph is expected to appear in Summer 2006. (The editorial team includes David DiBiase, Michael DeMers, Ann Johnson, Karen Kemp, Ann Taylor Luck, Brandon Plewe, and Elizabeth Wentz).

The GIS&T BoK is a product of the UCGIS Model Curricula initiative. Founded in 1998, a Model Curricula Task Force chaired by Duane Marble envisioned an innovative, adaptive curriculum that enabling undergraduates to develop the diverse competencies needed to apply and advance GIS&T in government, industry, and academia. Central to the Model Curricula vision was a Body of Knowledge – a comprehensive inventory of the subject matter that pertains uniquely to the GIS&T domain. Following similar initiatives in such fields as Computer Science, Information Science, and Project Management, the Task Force produced a draft GIS&T BoK as part of its 2003 Strawman Report. The manuscript submitted to AAG for publication in February 2006 is an elaboration of the draft BoK to which more than seventy scholars and practitioners, including thirty-one reviewers, contributed. It includes 330 topics defined in terms of 1,660 educational objectives. Future editions are expected to update and improve the 2006 edition.

Although it was conceived originally as a basis for undergraduate curriculum planning, the editorial team expects the GIS&T BoK to be useful to individuals and organizations in many different ways. The GIS&T BoK will help:

  • Job seekers, who wish to assess and communicate their experience and skills more clearly and accurately.

  • Employers, who need to identify knowledge and skill requirements for their employees, and who need to assess applicants’ competencies.

  • Geospatial professionals, who wish to better characterize the tasks they need to complete, to more easily locate resources that best meet their needs, to plan continuing professional development strategies.

  • Certification bodies, which need to determine the set of knowledge and skills that make someone a novice or expert in particular areas, and to create standard means of evaluating their applicants’ competencies.

  • Accrediting bodies, which seek to evaluate the core needs of education resources of different types (including undergraduate, graduate, professional, and informal education).

  • Education and training providers (including colleges, universities, professional trainers, and software vendors), which need to plan, implement, assess, and revise their programs.

  • Students, who wish to benchmark their educational achievements, or to identify programs and courses that provide education in their areas of interest.

  • Authors of professional and academic publications (including magazines, books, and textbooks), who will benefit from a standard foundation and terminology on which to can frame their own ideas.

  • GIScience researchers, whose work will extend the current Body of Knowledge.

  • The geospatial profession, which will gain wider recognition as a distinct and coherent field.


A pre-press edition of the GIS&T BoK is available at http://www.ucgis.org/priorities/education/modelcurriculaproject.asp  (A link to "Body of Knowledge 2006" appears at the bottom of that page.) The UCGIS Web site also provides a discussion forum to which you are invited to subscribe and post comments about the GIS&T BoK.
 

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