Rethinking GIScience Education in an Age of Disruptions

Rachel Franklin (@rsfrankl)

Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA), Harvard University

2025-05-20

What do we teach when we teach “GIS”?

The only constant is change

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Data
  • High performance and cloud computing

But also…

  • Climate and environmental challenges
  • Spatial and social inequalities
  • Conflict and political tension

The big idea

“…a new landscape for training within the discipline that is affecting not only what is taught in GIScience courses but also who is taught, why it is being taught, and how it is taught.”

GIS instruction already does a lot of heavy lifting

  • Tools and methods
  • But also complex, “systems” thinking
  • And integration across domains and disciplines

But also…

  • Spatial thinking and concepts
  • Coding and data science
  • Visualization
  • Data, data, data

Our role

  • Problem-based learning (many of us already do this!)
  • Open and inclusive practices (public teaching meterials, open source software, teaching replication/reproducibility)
  • Emphasizing social and ethical dimension

A few takeaways

  1. Rapidly changing environment, in terms of teaching spatial
  2. “Duty of care” in teaching geographical methods to non-geographers?
  3. Multiplicity of contact points when it comes to instruction (i.e., it’s not just faculty or course instructors)

Thanks!