Instructor: Steven Manson, Department of Geography Office: 473 Social Sciences, West Bank Phone: (612) 625-4577 Email: manson "at" umn.edu Office hours: see the teaching page Prerequisites: Geog 3561/ 5561 and Geog 3511/5511 or GIS 5555 (or their equivalents). Instructor consent otherwise. Course URL: http://hegis.umn.edu/geog5563/ Credit: 3 units
Class meetings: This course is offered in the Spring semester every year. This course will be next taught by Dr. Manson in Spring 2012.

Subject. Geographic information science and allied fields such as spatial analysis employ computation in combination with spatial data to explore a variety of human, natural, and human-environmental systems.

Students. Students in this course have tended to come from across the social, natural, and information sciences with no clear majority in any one area. This distribution makes for a lively and challenging meeting of the minds. The course is oriented towards Masters, MGIS, or PhD students although advanced undergraduates are invited to speak with the instructor to determine if they would find the course appropriate to their situation.

Purpose. This course expands on aspects of GIS covered by introductory GIS courses. It is designed to go into greater detail on key issues in GISc, ranging from database normalization to the ethics of GISc. The course balances the need for a broad overview of the breadth of GISc with the desire to explore in depth key topics and practices.

Goals. Students who successfully complete this course will be able to use GISc analysis to a deeper extent than if they had taken a single introductory course. This course offers a 'peek under the hood' of GISc while giving student the opportunity to combine theoretical knowledge with hands-on learning with geographic information systems. Depending on student orientation, this course can be used to gain insight into the technical underpinnings of specific GISc topics, complement on-going research, or provide a broader focus for GISc research.

Prerequisites. Students should be proficient in GIS (systems) and understand basic concepts in GISc (science). As noted above, this translates into having the Principles of GIS course or its equivalent, namely a 3 or 4 credit course that covers both theory and practice. You should also feel comfortable with using GIS software, especially ESRI's ArcMap and, if at all possible, a raster-oriented GIS like Clark Labs Idrisi. It is important to note that the labs require students to work through broad concepts and questions without being provided with step-by-step 'point and click' instructions. Students should feel comfortable (or feel that they can quickly become comfortable) with learning new GIS procedures by combining their current expertise with conceptual knowledge and the ability to solve problems largely on their own. Students who are not comfortable with this type of self-guided learning will not do well in this course.

Structure. This is an intensive hands-on class with a focus on readings, discussion, and applications. This translates into roughly 20% Lecture, 20% Discussion, and 60% Laboratory time. There is also a project component that students will complete partially in class but by and large on their own time.