Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Sweet Summertime @ GIS Online


Summer is here and the GIS Online team has hit the ground running, with no intention of slowing down!

Certificate program students have enrolled in GIS Programming (GIS 4103/5103) with Dr. Derick Morgan and GIS Applications with Dr. Paul Zandbergen (GIS 5100) and Ms. Penelope Mitchell (GIS 4048). Summer also marks the beginning of our graduate level certificate courses and a great time for all students to start thinking about internships.  We are happy to report that we have an outstanding bunch of students registered and we can’t wait to share their hard work and growth through the student spotlights. You will begin seeing weekly spotlights starting next week. In addition to spotlights, we plan to also post MOOC updates for the next few weeks. It’s nice to be back blogging – we’ve missed you!

You may have heard that UWF and GIS Online launched the university’s first MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) on May 18, 2015. This Introduction to GIS project has been in the works for the last 12 months and we are all quite pleased with the final product. As of today, we have just over 3000 registered in the course. As part of the orientation process students were asked to complete a demographic survey. So far, just shy of 1000 students have completed the survey and left us with the following tidbits of information.

  • Most participants are between the ages of 24-34 and more than half have some experience with GIS whether through a classroom setting, online course, or their job.
  • Many of the participants are taking this course with hopes to earn a promotion or work towards a career change. 
  • Close to 40 % of the respondents live in North America but it is so very exciting to see people all over the world in our course. GIS Online @ UWF is truly a global name! 

There is still time to register if you are looking to refresh your GIS skills or simply find out what MOOC’s are all about. We welcome all current students, alumni and friends to join us! This is also a perfect time for your family and friends to get a glimpse of your passion for GIS – because we all know it gets old describing what we do as kind of like Google Maps but not really...