GIS Core Course Assessment - 2014

At the very beginning of each semester, an assessment test will be distributed within our Intermediate GIS – Geog 306. This assessment is not a formal test. The purpose of the assessment is to begin a process of assessing how well students are learning the fundamental concepts of GIS in Introduction to GIS course. This assessment then will be used as an efficient tool for the instructors, to better redesign the review contents on fundamentals of GIS in Intermediate GIS class and also will be used to redesign the content and material of our Introductory GIS – Geog 206 course. The assessment quiz contains 20 questions on fundamental concepts of GIS that are being taught within Introduction to GIS course. The questions have been carefully designed to assess and measure the underlying concepts and techniques of GIS at an introductory level relative to department SLOs and course objectives.

In Fall 2014, assessment quiz was given in our Geog 306 – Intermediate GIS. In a class of 23students, 21 students were presented for the assessment quiz. The result of the assessment is as follows (in some cases questions have been combined):

  1. Majority of our participating students have taken Introduction to GIS at CSUN (only one student took Intro to GIS at a community college). Majority of the students had Introduction to GIS [Geog 206] in Fall 2013, only one student had Intro to GIS more than a year ago. In the Department of Geography, we highly recommend that students take GIS core courses (Geog 206, Geog 306 and Geog 406) in consecutive semesters.

  1. On the question of defining a Shapefileonly 24% of the students selected the right answer on a multiple choice question. This was primarily due to the fact that there are two options very close among the options to select from. We have addressed this in our revised Geog 206 curriculum to emphasis the definition and usage of Shapefiles in GIS. Moreover, this concept is been reviewed in our Intermediate GIS Geog 306.
  1. Majority of the participating students could define a Geodatabase [the native file format for ArcGIS].
  1. 48% of the students correctly identified the definition for projection.This could be due to the fact that most of the excersices emphasized on hands-on skills dealing with projections rather the definitions and theoretical background. A whole chapter in our new Intro GIS lab manual (in eText format) has addressed projection.
  1. A strong majority of the students defined the term “GIS” correctly:
  1. A majority of students could name correctly a Coordinate System.
  1. 57% of the students could correctly explain in short sentences the difference between two main data models in GIS, raster data model and vector data model.
  1. Most of the student could identify the main components of ArcGIS Software the min GIS package used in our labs.
  1. Geodatabase creation and organization is the core part of GIS data management. A solid majority of the students (81%) could describe a Geodatabase.
  1. One of the most used capabilities of GIS is geospatial data visualization, by creating different types of maps and symbolizing them. Majority of the students could identify the main elements of a map. However, only 33% of the students could name at least two different types of the maps.
  1. Although only a quarter of the students could define a Relational Database, however 86% of them correctly defined and explained joining data attributes in GIS.
  1. Only one third of our students could correctly explain the process of geocoding. We addressed this by adding a separate module emphasizing geocoding lecture and lab assignments in our Geog 306 Intermidiate GIS.
  1. Majority of the students could give examples ofgeoprocessing techniques including Buffer in GIS.

We revised our Geog 206 curriculum. In summer 2013, Dr. Maas and Dr. Boroushaki redesigned Geog 206 curriculum to address the shortcomings of our Introduction to GIS and create a better core understanding of GIS concepts and techniques. The eText is now ready in its initial format and partially will be used in our Geog 206 in Fall 2014. We are expecting to use the eText in its full capacity by Fall 2015.