This course is one in a series offered by the California State University, Bakersfield as part of their professional GIS certification program. As such, there are several separate areas that this course is addressing. First, this is a university course and will be taught as a somewhat demanding 10 week 3 credit course. Secondly, this is a course intended as core background for the use of GIS in professional careers. By this, we mean that there are certain preliminary requirements (such as general computer, Windows, and Internet skills and competency in Arcview, Excel, and Access); additionally, this course is not aimed squarely at the GIS professional but at the professional that is to use GIS for their regular procedures, much as many will use Excel on a routine, daily basis. Lastly, this is of course an Internet course. As a student, you will be able to move at your own pace. There will be readings from the Internet as well as Internet research.

This particular course has different sections that can be taken in any order (except where noted). That is one of the advantages of an Internet course. Students do however give up some of the personal contact with their instructor. On the surface, this may be somewhat dismaying. However, to counter this situation, I am providing each student with my E-mail address and the promise to respond to your questions and comments within two days (usually far less). Student assignments will be formatted for incorporation as E-mail also, so feedback should be quicker than in some other classroom settings. If these dire warnings have not yet dissuaded you, then I am hopeful that the following course can be especially rewarding. Thank you in advance, and please contact me with any questions or feedback.

*Note: Exercises and Feedback Forms must be submitted to the instructor via e-mail to receive credit.

#Note: See Bibliography

Biography

This course was prepared by Paul Ullman. He is a Geographic Information System consultant who has worked in the field since 1988. He is a graduate of the University of Houston and holds a degree in Civil Engineering. He has worked in the field of Automation Technology since 1983.

Mr. Ullman's company, Geographica, has completed extensive GIS projects in and around California. These projects have ranged from automating the Kings County Assessors office, to preparing a Habitat Exchange system for Kemper Real Estate, to managing data for several small California water districts. Mr. Ullman was one of the founding members of the Kern County Geographic Information Consortium, now Kern URISA and has been active in all aspects of GIS data development and exchange.

Skills Necessary for this Course

This course requires that students have expertise in and access to the following:

Microsoft Excel (the dBase program is an excellent supplemental option which is not required)

ArcView

Microsoft Access

Your computer's operating system

Your computer's Internet system including browser.

Further, each student is required to have completed the prerequisites for this course which are GIS 1 and GIS 2 or equivalent. Students are also required to have ArcView and database software loaded on the computers to be used for this course; the University will not provide this software as part of this course.

Now that these warnings are out of the way, there are some skills required by this course that you may not yet have experienced. Each of these certificate courses will contain this information, so you won't have to try to go back to your previous notes. These are skills that we as computer users may take for granted, so refer to this area of the course whenever there is some computer skill that you feel unprepared.

Working with ZIP files

Students that access computer files usually access individual files that the instructor provides as directory locations and file names. The data provided for this course is prepared differently: groups of files are written to another file in a compressed or ZIP form. ZIP files are groups of files and directories that have to be expanded or unZIPped before their information can be used.

The ZIP file shareware utilities were developed by PKWARE, and though now there are several different companies making ZIP utilities, PKZIP and PKUNZIP are the two most often used utilities and are the "fall back position" that most people take if they are forced to use a generic ZIP product. The information below about ZIPping and unZIPping files is based on PKWARE programs. For access to PKWARE's Internet site, see http://www.pkware.com/download.html

ZIPped files are typically provided with a file extension of .zip. For extracting the information in these files, the program to use is PKUNZIP. For making ZIP files, use PKZIP. ZIP files may also be specially processed in a form that allows for the data to be self extracting; files in this format have a file extension of .exe and are prepared using the ZIP2EXE program.

Whether you have ZIP or ZIPped executable files, the files should first be copied to their own directory. This directory will serve as the initial repository of the extrracted information. There arew several reasons for putting the ZIP file into its own directory for extraction. One of the most important is that if you have several ZIP files to extract information, file names may be reused between these Zip files and there then is a potential for confusion as to which files go with which set of extracted data. Also, the files contained in a ZIP file may be ten times or more in file volume, so be sure that adequate disk space is allotted. Finally, if you download a ZIP file from the Internet, it usually is sent to a default directory determined by your browser configuration. Extracting the data in that download directory without copying the ZIP files to there own directory makes for a real file mess after about the fifth or sixth file extraction (this is the voice of experience: most computer advice comes from someone that has done an operation wrong and has vowed never to again experience that level of heartache).

Once the file is in its extraction directory, extract the information by typing path/PKUNZIP filename (without the .zip extension), being sure to include the proper path to PKUNZIP. If your data is contained within a ZIPped executable file, simply type the filename (again without the .exe extension).

Virus Protection

Since you may be downloading files from the Internet or from other media, you should be aware that there is a potential for these files to contain viruses that may infect and damage your computers data (and even damage your equipment). This course has taken every means to protect students from viruses, but students should also be aware that virus infections remain an ongoing problem of file exchanges in the Information Age. It is recommended that you have a good, working antivirus program in place prior to beginning this course. If not, I recommend you implement such a program before proceeding.

If you just blew off the last recommendation, I would suggest you become familiar with the Internet site of McAfee which is http://www.mcafee.com/mstore/activ_store.html. Neither this course nor this University are recommending the use of McAfeeÌs programs nor are there any revenues provided to the University or your instructor from McAfee. My reason for suggesting this particular virus protection program comes from an experience that I believe that all will appreciate. The first time I was infected with a virus, I was supporting a company with more than 30 computers. When we noticed odd messages referencing a Ïstoned virusÓ and these same machines started to have unusual disk failures, I heeded the advice of other users and contacted McAfee. Even though I was desperate, McAfee explained that I should download from their site a series of files to test the computer equipment and locate the virus as well as repair the damage. Then, after the crisis was over and if the program was appropriate, they would be happy to accept our order for there software.

Introduction

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been around for more than 25 years. The reasons for the current flurry of excitement are that the programs are less arcane and the equipment necessary to run GIS is significantly cheaper than ever before. (As a reference, in 1992, I prepared a cost estimate for one GIS station, complete with training, and the cost was $72,000, a similar system today would be significantly below $15,000.) Also, many professional publications have been extolling the use of GIS as though there was some moral superiority imparted to those few that implemented the technology. The result was pressure on many managers to implement this whiz-bang stuff that the mangers could not understand.

From a Users point of view, there are somewhat different pressures to implement GIS. At this time, there is a wealth of data available in GIS formats. (That is not to say that there is no need to learn to create data: this course focuses on the data creation and editing aspects of GIS.) That means that for applications, especially analyses that require a geographic perspective, GIS technology is immediately available to enhance your own functionality.

Users must also understand that GIS technology is more than the ArcView program. While most of the examples in this course will use ArcView, there are a number of other powerful GIS programs available. The idiosynchracies of these programs, especially with regard to data developed by different GIS programs, will be discussed throughout this course.

Grading and Associated Particulars

This Internet course is designed as a university-level ten-week course. While it is not completely required of the student to complete each weekÌs assignments on a weekly basis, it is expected that the course will be completed during the current quarter period.

This course is divided into 9 parts; at the end of each part is an exercise. Students must submit each exercise to the instructor via e-mail. The exercises will provide a total of 50 per cent of each student's grade. Also at the end of each section is a course feedback form which each student is required to complete for 10% of his or her grade; this form must likewise be submitted via e-mail to the instructor. A midterm exam will cover basic principles of GIS and will serve as 15 per cent of the student's grade. The remaining 25 percent of grades will be developed from a comprehensive final.

Student collaboration is an extremely useful learning technique. One of the goals of this class will be to develop these interactions across the Internet. However, any indication of cheating will be dealt with as per the policy of the Calfiornia State University, Bakersfield Academic Policies.

Return to top of syllabus