Flexibility in GIS Education - A Vision

Abstract In the last 5 years there has been dramatic changes inthe development, design, and implementation of GIS.Rapid advances in processing power, developments insoftware, and increased availability of digital datahave allowed diverse applications and the executionof complex geocomputational analysis. With theadvent of the new millennium, speculation on theform of future systems is an important issue. This is amajor consideration for those charged with thespecification of GIS curricula in tertiary educationenvironment. The over-riding question is what futureaspects are going to be most useful to graduatingstudents entering the industry or undertaking scien-tific research? This paper represents the authors’postulations on the likely influences on future tertiaryGIS education. It is proposed that to meet thischallenge at Otago, that a new joint board of studiesbe established to oversee the formation of a proposedmultidisciplinary degree in GIS. 2 Vision To develop a new course in any subject or disciplinetoday requires knowledge of the market place and/orthe power of great foresight. They are necessary tojustify both the economics and relevance - maybeeuphemistically, here called acceptance. Theintroductory section of this paper concentrates on thevision rather than the market place, though the twoare inextricably linked. The issue directly addressedhere is - “Where will we be with the spatial systems inthe year 2020?”. This question is approached withsome domain confidence, but with an equal amountof scepticism as to the reliability of any forecasting.It is only with these tenets well understood that it ispossible to proceed.Spatial systems are inclusive of all matters relating togeographic information systems, - the teaching andlearning, the people, the data, the systems, theanalysis techniques, the context and the society withinwhich it is being used. So, where will we be? Thereare sufficient indicators and visionaries that predictthe generalities as follows;1. more/most people will be working from home,2. both software and systems will be disparate anddistributed,3. the world will have “shrunk”,4. people will increasingly have to respect the planet,5. power will concentrate in those with information.From these unfolds a vision of the spatial world;1. systems and software will be distributedinternationally,2. data sources will be distributed internationally,3. problems and solutions will be addressedinternationally,4. education will be student centred and experienceswill be for all of life (Meade 1997),5. spatial systems will rely on implementedapplications based on interoperability and softwaresolutions to standards (data standards per se willhave faded),