Planning Considerations for Online Certificates and Degrees in GIS

INTRODUCTION Higher education is experiencing its most profound period of change since passage of the GI Bill following World War II. Along with touching almost every other aspect of our lives, the Information Revolution is changing where learning takes place, the methods used to teach, and how students interact with instructors and peers. The age of high-tech, Web-based instruction has arrived. The rush to offer online courses is being driven not only by calls for higher education to be more accessible and responsive but also by the potential for institutions to generate new revenue (Bogue and Hall 2003, Burke 2005, Leveille 2006). As the number of students enrolling in Web-based courses increases, educators, administrators, and employers must understand the benefits, problems, and opportunities associated with online learning. In recent years, online instruction involving geographic information systems (GIS) has become available at U.S. colleges and universities through programs ranging from traditional (face-to-face) courses that include an online component to 100 percent online degrees and certificate programs. The growth in online GIS instruction corresponds with the increasing demand for a geospatial workforce that possesses greater knowledge and improved competencies--at a time marked by nontraditional students searching for convenient access to higher education. For GIS professionals employed full-time, online learning offers an alternative to inflexible class schedules and work-to-school commutes. However, along with their convenience, new online GIS courses and programs can generate substantial challenges for instructors, students, and institutions. For example, faculty must adapt to new teaching pedagogies requiring significantly greater course preparation and correspondence time. Students enrolled in online courses face isolation from peers, slow Internet connections, and problems using complicated GIS software. Questions easily addressed face-to-face may require substantially more time to resolve through chat rooms, discussion boards, or e-mail correspondence. Institutional challenges include the identification of resources needed for course development and maintenance, the selection of appropriate assessment procedures, and the successful navigation of intellectual property issues. This paper explores benefits and barriers associated with the development and sustainability of certificate programs and degrees in GIS. The principal goal is to provide guidelines for institutions that are considering the development of a fully online certificate or degree in GIS. The terms distance learning and distance education represent a range of activities from correspondence study to computer-assisted learning and online instruction. Distance education has been a part of American higher education since it was introduced by Illinois Wesleyan College in 1873. Students enrolled in early correspondence courses worked independently, returning assignments and receiving the course instructor's feedback through the mail. New venues for distance learning were later adapted for technologies such as radio, prerecorded sound tapes and videotapes, and television. Student motivations for enrolling in distance-education courses include the desire to improve job effectiveness, enhance opportunities for salary increases, or achieve professional advancement. For public institutions, distance education became an alternative for the geographically isolated who might not otherwise attend a college class. Criticisms of early distance courses were often similar to those directed at today's online courses: overcommercialization, high student attrition, and lack of face-to-face contact between student and instructor. ONLINE INSTRUCTION Online or Web-based courses emerged in the 1990s with the growing availability and affordability of personal computers and Internet access (Daniel 1994). As Kriger (2001) notes, universities began offering online courses to improve access for nontraditional students during a period of shrinking public funding for higher education. …