{"id":3560,"date":"2014-10-20T07:27:27","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T14:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/?p=3560"},"modified":"2014-10-20T07:27:27","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T14:27:27","slug":"making-it-stick-three-truths-about-teaching-with-gis","status":"publish","type":"insider","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/making-it-stick-three-truths-about-teaching-with-gis","title":{"rendered":"Making It Stick: Three Truths about Teaching with GIS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In their insightful book about the science of successful learning, Make It Stick<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel spell out some truths about learning. In addition, they dispel some preconceived notions that many of us may have about learning that simply aren\u2019t valid. I believe that three of these truths are instructive as to how we as the GIS<\/a> community should approach teaching and learning with GIS: learning is deeper and more durable when it\u2019s <\/em>effortful, learning requires a foundation of prior knowledge, and putting knowledge into a larger context helps learning.
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\nEffortful<\/strong>
\nThe authors claim that, \u201clearning is deeper and more durable when it\u2019s effortful. <\/em>Learning that\u2019s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.\u201d Those of us who have been in the GIS field for a while remember the days when it required a fair amount of effort to perform such routine tasks as georegistering your imagery, projecting your maps, or incorporating your field data into a GIS. Despite the fact that teaching and learning with GIS is far easier than it was a decade ago, I think we as educators do a disservice to our educator colleagues in universities or in K-12, or even to students, when we say, \u201cGIS is easy.\u201d
\nWhy do I say that?
\nFirst of all, teaching and learning are difficult tasks, no matter what the subject is, and not for the fainthearted. Ask any student or educator, and they will tell you. Or simply think about your own educational experiences.
\nSecond, consider everything that needs to be incorporated into teaching with GIS: It is a delicate balance among three things:
\n1. Delivering core content knowledge, including knowledge about everything from transportation networks, climate systems, watersheds, energy, natural hazards, population change, and much more.
\n2. Developing skills, including geotechnology-related skills to perform spatial queries, grapple with map overlay operations, and generate spatial statistics, as well as other technical skills such as work with databases, imagery, data formats, multimedia, and much more.
\n3. Fostering the geographic or geospatial perspective\u2014the \u201cwhys of where.\u201d
\nIndeed, nowadays, while it may be easier technically to bring in, say, a CSV file into ArcGIS Online<\/a> than it was to bring in a spreadsheet into ArcInfo back in the 1990s, even this skill relies on some key foundations. Just a few of these foundations include:<\/p>\n