SSI Professors Karen Kemp and Jennifer Swift have joined forces with 11 other GIS scholars to co-author the article "Cyber Literacy for GIScience: Toward Formalizing Geospatial Computing Education” published online in The Professional Geographer. The article is available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00330124.2018.1518720?journalCode=rtpg20
Their article addresses the pressing need to educate a new generation of scientists and citizens who understand how space and place matter in the real world. This new generation will understand and can keep pace with technological advancements in the computational world. They define "cyberliteracy for GIScience" and outline eight core areas that serve as a framework for establishing the essential abilities and foundational knowledge necessary to navigate and thrive in this new technologically rich world.
The co-authors arrange core areas to provide multiple dimensions of learning, ranging from a technological focus to a problem solving focus or a focus on GIScience or computational science. They establish a competency matrix as a means of assessing and evaluating levels of cyberGIScience literacy across the eight core areas. In addition, they outline plans to catalyze the collaborative development and sharing of instructional materials to embed cyberGIScience literacy in the classroom and begin to realize a cyberliterate citizenry and academe.
Kemp, professor of the practice of spatial sciences, and Swift, associate professor (teaching) of spatial sciences, are joined on the article with Eric Shook of the University of Minnesota, Forrest J. Bowlick of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Ola Ahlqvist of The Ohio State University, Patricia Carbajeles-Dale of Clemson University, David DiBiase of Esri and Pennsylvania State University, Eun-Kyeong Kim of the University of Zurich, Scott Lathrop of Schodor Education Foundation, Britta Ricker of the University of Twente, Patrick Rickles of the University College London, Johnathan Rush of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Shaowen Wang of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
This article is the foundation for the three-year NSF Grant that Shook, Bowlick, Kemp and Anand received in August 2018 for “Hour of Cyberinfrastructure: Developing Cyber Literacy for Geographic Information Science.”
