Course description
Geographic information technologies continue to drive the representation and management of complex as well as everyday spatial information. As a result, increasing numbers of for-profit and non-profit organizations have recognized the need to transform their information into a spatial format. The demand for collaborative and participatory skills in the use of these mapping tools has, of course, been furthered by this general trend. Therefore, the goal for this course is that each student will become an independent and effective GIS user while developing their collaborative skills in the use of GIS for spatial analysis and representation. To meet this goal, this course follows a participatory workshop model, drawing on Elwood (2009) -- an intensive, hands-on experience in which student teams use GIS in collaboration with community partners. These partnerships will involve students in a full range of collaborative GIS: working with team members and project partners to identify project goals, acquiring and preparing spatial data for GIS analyses, communicating with clients to assess progress, managing spatial data, and producing necessary maps and analyses. The lecture, reading, and seminar discussion components of the course will focus on topics important to collaborative development -- to be prepared to implement, manage, and apply in a variety of research and applications areas, and in multiple geographical and institutional contexts.

Community partners
The GIS Workshop course partners with organizations that have needs for spatial information development and analysis. Facilitated by a faculty member, students will work with partner organizations to:
1. develop hard copy maps,
2. collect primary spatial data using GPS,
3. transform existing organizational data into spatial data,
4. analyze spatial data (demographics, service-provision, network analysis, 3D spatial visualizations), and/or
5. develop web-based mapping solutions.