Metadata Education Project

Metadata education strategy for "Advanced GIS: spatial analysis" course

Course topics are only suggestions, based on a survey of existing GIS-related course outlines. Not all courses of this type will include all these topics, and depending on instructor preference some topics will be emphasized more than others. If a topic is included in a course, links are provided for suggested methods of integrating metadata into the topic. Topics with a "high" designation indicate that the value of discussing the relation of metadata to the specific topic is very high, and it is suggested that more lecture time/exercise time should be devoted to metadata for these particular topics than for topics with a "medium" or "low" designation.

Links to example course outlines

Learning Outcome Categories
Course Topics Conviction Motivation Skills Knowledge
Projection/scale . . . .
Database principles . . medium medium (traditional attributes vs. object-oriented features)
Data types (environmental/socioeconomic) . . . .
Data models (vector/raster) . . low .
Data sources . . medium(how to read metadata) .
Data quality/error high high medium medium (feature level metadata)
Data automation/update . . . .
Spatial Analysis high high (replicate process) medium .
GIS project design/implementation . . . .
Decision making medium medium . .
Future/GIS trends . . . high (embedding communication of metadata within GIS software)
Interoperability/standards . . . .
Ethics/legal issues high (liability) . . .
Student projects . . medium .