Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

I recommend auditing these [GIS Courses] (https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis) on Coursera for free and paring it with an ESRI personal use license which is about a $100 for the year and gets you access to basically all products and extensions.

So I recently started a five course GIS certification from Coursera and UC Davis. There are five courses, about a month each, and you pay $50/month.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

Coursera GIS specialization?

I'm a fairly recent grad in the last couple years with a BS in molecular biology and MS in general bio (non-thesis) with a focus on human biology and ecology/evolution. I've had a few different jobs, mostly seasonal, and now know that I love field work as opposed to lab work and am trying to make the transition into full time wildlife/marine/zoology/conservation/ecology or something along those lines. Anything that puts me outside working with nature. A ton of the positions I've seen and applied for (especially government jobs) seem to lean heavily on GIS knowledge and experience, of which I have absolutely none.

Does anyone have experience with the GIS specialization offered on Coursera (through UC Davis)? I've taken a lot of Coursera courses before, mostly for fun, and have one certificate in forensics. Would something like this actually contribute much to my applications? It's a good bit of money to throw down ($355 for the full specialization), but I'm willing to do it if it would really be beneficial, as I'm currently unemployed and need something to do anyway. Coursera does also offer financial aid, which I'll probably apply for, but I have no idea how that works or likely it is for it to be waived.

I love Coursera as far as courses to take for fun, but how much are those certificates respected in the real world? Do they actually mean anything to add to a resume or is it just a novelty? Does this specialization cover what I'd need to know to use GIS in biology (I literally know nothing about it)? Are there any other online GIS course options that would be a better bet?

I know ultimately experience is what counts in this field moreso than education, but this seems like a possible exception since so many jobs want the knowledge in GIS and I can't find a starting point to get any.

Edit: I'm also considering going for a PhD, likely in marine sciences, if that matters.

I’m still in the beginning stages, just learning the fundamentals, so right now I’m probably around the same place as you. but the four courses (I said five earlier whoops) are 1. Fundamentals of GIS, 2. Data Formats, Design, and Quality, 3. Geospatial and Environmental Analysis, 4. Imagery, Automation, and Applications. The four courses which compromise the specialization are suggested to take ~6 months, but everything is on a rolling basis so you could do it as fast or slow as you want. If you audit the course for free you can do the assignments, but you don’t get feedback on them, while if you pay/get aid for the certificate then there is both group-sourced and instructor feedback. One thing if you try to get financial aid is you have to reapply for each course within the specialization, but it is fairly easy to apply.

Here is the link if you wanted to check it out! https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis#courses

The way that I got into it was through Coursera first - I was a social studies teacher who wanted out of education after eight years. I took a couple free courses on Coursera through Penn State and found that it was something I really enjoyed. I continued taking GIS courses through Penn State until I got my Post-bacchalaureate certficate (which was either 4 or 5 courses), which I used to get an internship at a local government for the summer and then my first job. I'm not seeing the same courses I took, but UC Davis has a GIS specialization on there. Coursera was free when I took it and it charges now, but still less than any college would charge. You can try out a course on there and see if its something you'd really be interested in.

In addition, what I also did was find some companies very close to me that had GIS jobs available, and I sent their HR departments emails saying that I was interested in going in to GIS as an educational option, and wanted to see how it's used, and could I job shadow a GIS professional for a day just to see how it was used in a professional setting. They agreed and I just sat down and watched a guy work on a work on producing permit prints for a telecommunications project for a day while peppering him with questions. It was a pretty worthwhile experience - and I work in the telecom industry today.

Also, at least from what I've seen, knowledge and experience trumps education. A lot of people I work with either have associates degrees or a bachelor's degree in something else with a GIS minor. I haven't met anyone with a master's, and it doesn't sound like that on its own would open a lot of doors. Get your first job, learn as much as you can, and learn how to use Model Builder and how to code a little bit in Python. Having a little bit of coding experience or anything that helps you contribute to automation will make you more marketable. You can summarize GIS data and export into formats like Exel documents, and learning some of the slightly-more-complicated Microsoft Excel formulas will give you a leg up. A lot of management types are seemingly only management types because they know how Pivot Tables work. No exaggeration.

Another one in your first job is to keep an open line of communication with other departments that use your data - for me, that include field technicians, civil engineers, managers, and accountants. Learn some of their buzzwords, learn what they use the data for, and you can learn little tips and tricks to provide that information more quickly and you can make a little reputation for yourself.

Good luck, and welcome to the map nerd life.

Coworkers have recommended this. My only concern is that it is using arcmap and not ArcGIS Pro. https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

I really enjoyed this: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

Becoming an urban designer

Hi all,

I’m finishing my master in Computer science, but some time ago I realized this is not what I want to do in my life. I have only my master thesis left, so I want to graduate, however, then I want to change my career path to urban design and planning. I think my studies will give me some benefits and tools I can use, like soft skills, problem solving, analytical thinking, etc.

Since a long time I was fascinated in urbanism, how cities work, the way they can change people lifes and how to create more friendly spaces. That’s why I created the list of tasks I should get familiar with. I’m working, so I want to fulfill them in my free time, after work and during the weekends.

1. Practice urban landscape drawing and sketching: https://www.udemy.com/urban-drawing-and-design-101/learn/v4/overview I think this is quite important skill to learn, even in a digital era.
2. Learn GiS: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialization: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis
3. Read books based on programme of some studies. Here’s the list of books I created:
4. Happy city by Charles Montgomery(Read already)
5. Cities for people by Jan Gehl(read already)
6. Local Planning: Contemporary Principles and Practice
7. The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch
8. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein
9. The Art of Making Cities by Camillo Sitte

10. Design of Cities by Edmund Bacon

    HERE I”VE FOUND LONG LIST OF BOOKS: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/Bazinga+Catalog+PDFs/Planning+%26+Urban+Design+Textbooks+US.pdf Which one are worth to read and about which I shouldn’t bother?

11. Do some online courses:

12. Future cities: https://www.edx.org/xseries/future-cities-0#why-this-program
13. Making Architecture: https://www.coursera.org/learn/making-architecture
14. Greening the Economy: Sustainable Cities: https://www.coursera.org/learn/gte-sustainable-cities
15. Cities are back in town : urban sociology for a globalizing urban world: https://www.coursera.org/learn/urban-development
16. Designing Cities: https://www.coursera.org/learn/designing-cities
17. A Global History of Architecture: https://www.edx.org/course/global-history-architecture-mitx-4-605x-0
18. The Architectural Imagination: https://www.edx.org/course/architectural-imagination-harvardx-gsd1x
19. Management of Urban Infrastructures – part 1: https://www.coursera.org/learn/managing-urban-infrastructures-1
20. Smart Cities – Management of Smart Urban Infrastructures: https://www.coursera.org/learn/smart-cities

After getting more familiar with theory and tools used during designing and planning, I think the next step should be to apply for an internship or apply for postgraduate programmes(mostly 1 year long).

What do you guys think about it? Any recommendations, tips? I based my programme partially on Amsterdam’s Urbanism studies.

Any promo code you recommend?

Planning to do this

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

Any promo code would help.

Thanks!

GIS Coursera class I got certificates for:

Beginner

• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialization by UC Davis

Intermediate

• GIS, Mapping, and Spatial Analysis Specialization by University of Toronto
• Spatial Data Science and Applications by Yonsei University
• GIS Data Formats, Design and Quality by UC Davis

I would maybe consider starting with something like this and see how you feel about it: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis?

This course is EXCELLENT https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

Yeah online courses, that one is available on coursera

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

Coursera has a free GIS course thru UC Davis. There are 5 courses, you get ArcGIS for free, and there is a peer network that can help you with your mapping and skills.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis#courses

There’s a great GIS education at Coursera that I highly recommend. You learn Argis and a lot of other things that can be very helpful even if you decide to be a surveyor.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis?

Even though I have an education in Cartography and surveying from 14 years ago I took the course at Coursera and learnt some interesting new stuff.

If you like to try some on your own there’s some open source software that’s as good as the commercial ones, such as QGis that I’ve implemented in my own work.

/ Andreas - Sweden

yes actually, I took this GIS course on Coursera a couple years ago, and the instructor's relaxing voice would always bring me to the brink of sleep. https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis#about

This course on Coursera offers a one-year free student license for Arc Desktop. There's a link to check the system reqs. A decent laptop should be able to handle it fine. The course (through UC Davis Extension) is pretty solid as well if you're interested in being guided through the Arc software.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

Howdy!

Coursera has these groups of classes called specializations where you take a couple of classes on a topic, usually taught by the same instructors. This one is the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialization. It includes these classes:

• Fundamentals of GIS
• GIS Data Formats, Design, and Quality
• Geospatial and Environmental Analysis
• Imagery, Automation, and Applications
• Geospatial Analysis Project

There's an option to "try it for free" or audit the classes, but you have to pay to get get the certificate for the class. When I was enrolling the cheapest option was to buy a monthly subscription which was like $50 bucks US a month.

One of the perks is that when you pay, it comes with an Advanced Student Desktop License included in the course. This includes:

• ArcCatalog
• ArcGlobe
• ArcMap
• ArcScene

I'm about halfway done with the last course before the final project. I previously had a course in ArcGIS in graduate school, and used ArcGIS online for a field ecology job I had. I'm mostly doing this as a refresher and so I have a piece of paper I can show to employers that says "I know GIS." So far, I'm digging it. It's more than a refresher; it's going into greater detail than my class did. The automation course is pretty cool, though I wish they did more Python scripting instead of just using the model builder. But I've learned more about it in this online cert class than I did in an actual graduate course.

As far as how useful it is for getting jobs, I'm going to say it's a hard maybe? A friend of mine is a hiring manager at an aerospace firm and he told me this might actually get my foot in the door for that. I also spoke to a Space Force lieutenant colonel who said something similar. I haven't tested this yet, but I'm optimistic.

The link for the course is here. Hope this helps!

I'm wrapping up this coursera course, and as a new user have found it useful. You can audit free or get charged \~$50/month to get graded, but comes with a 1 year license. Also suggest finding a pdf, renting, or buying the book "Getting to Know ArcGIS" and doing the exercises. ESRI website also has good resources.

I am almost done with a Coursera specialization and I am quite happy with the quality of it. You also pay per month so if you are quick you can save some money. https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis. The first 2 courses of this specialization seem to be enough to learn the tasks you listed.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis?

Kidding, that is a full blown study course over multiple months. Courses like these are in most degrees if you study geography at a university. What this guy did is download a digital elevation model (DEM) from Nasa, fuse it together using a geographical information system (GIS), and then process it a bit graphically (but not too much). I don't know the terrain of the Ohio, or if it is Ohio state or what, but you should see either the mountains of the state or the river in this image. The colour changes from black to white based on elevation.

Coursera offers some great GIS courses through UC Davis that cover basic and advanced topics. You can do them all for free or do the paid versions and receive a certificate you can put on your resume/LinkedIn page. They come with a free one year student version of ArcGIS too which is really helpful.

The first one took me about a week and a half to complete working on it a couple hours a day, you could probably zip through it even faster as a refresher if you've got the basics down.

ArcGIS or QGIS. They're not the easiest softwares but you can learn them on your own and they can generate really cool maps with similar data. You also might use it in urban planning courses if you'll take any

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

I'm doing this 5 course specialisation.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

I'm half way through the second course but I do believe once I get to the end of the specialisation I will have enough skills to actually use GIS for what I want. It is well run and you get a 1 year esri licence with it.

Yes I am really struggling with lack of previous experience/confidence. During my undergrad I had a semester of limited fieldwork with a lab, I participated in a few weekend animal surveys, but nothing very substantial.

I've had several people mention GIS to me. I found this course online that I think would be a good starting point as I'm not longer in university.

I likely need to just search harder for an adequate position that provides housing or something similar.

Thanks for your response. I am really struggling with confidence issues due lack of experience for my age, and the current massive levels of the pandemic. I feel as though many previous opportunities may have dried up due to restrictions on things like public housing. Prior to the pandemic I had been getting into traveling and staying in hostels and figured finding some kind of entry level position with shared housing would be an ideal start, but with COVID I'm concerned about what opportunities may be available nowadays.

Saw this today: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

Coursera offers free GIS classes through UC Davis that should cover the basic fundamentals of GIS.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

I had the same question. Just to make sure, you are talking about this one, right?: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

In you are somewhat begginer , i find this one really good https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis is slowpaced as it explain every aspect and give you some theory(gcs, planar projections....)

I'm taking this online course, or "specialization" as they call it, to get my feet wet in GIS: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

It's structured really well and builds up your skills so each next step is manageable. It's based on ArcGIS, but I'm sure the skills are transferable to QGIS.

I'm on the third of five sections of the course and I'm really starting to feel comfortable with GIS.

>UC Davis GIS Specialization on Coursera.

Is this what your referring too?
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis

Hi, Please check the link (below). Coursera provided the Free online course. There are 5 courses from basic to advance. if you complete all courses you will get a certificate but to get the certificate you need to complete the quiz and assignments.

if you need more help please let me know.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis?utm_source=link&utm_medium=page_share&utm_content=xdp&utm_campaign=banner_button

Tres cursos que fiz no inicio de carreira academica que me ajudaram (atualmente faco PhD em uma otima universidade no exterior):

- Learning How to Learn - É um curso bem legal que te da ferramentas para estudar de maneira produtiva. Tambem te ensina o processo de aprendizado, pra quem esta na faculdade pode ser util.

- R programming - Se vc nao sabe nada de programacao é quer comecar a aprender com um enfoque em "Data Science" o curso é legal e tambem te ensina a usar o SWIRL, que pode ser util caso vc prefira botar a "mao na massa"

- Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialization - Pra quem quiser aprender Geoprocessamento e nao sabe por onde comecar o curso é uma boa - Nao sei se eles ainda garantem 1 ano de acesso de ArcGIS pra quem nao paga, mas era assim.

Esses cursos nao vao te dar certificados, a nao ser que voce pague, mas se vc é discipulo de Bilu podem ser util.

ESRI contracts with many, many, many local, state, and federal government agencies. This is not only because of the desktop software (ArcGIS Pro vs. QGIS), but because ESRI has other software products that bundle with their desktop ArcGIS Pro to meet the diverse needs of customers. Basically, ArcGIS is an organized platform with a stable business supporting it. This is in contrast to (and anyone feel free to correct me if I go too far off course here...) QGIS, which, while it has great open source community support and definitely can be configured in ways competitive to ArcGIS, just doesn't have as many big players behind it. That being said, the principles of GIS remain the same and tools/methods are pretty similar, just in different places (and imo I like the interface of ArcGIS Pro MUCH better).

Like others said, there's a $100/year personal license which includes access to ArcGIS Pro, ArcMap, ArcGIS Online and some other things. But most schools, if they're teaching GIS, can give you a license (though fyi if you have a Mac you will need to install Windows using Parallels).

There are a ton of online resources to learn GIS. I'll link to some of the common&free ones here:

• Mapschool
• Learn ArcGIS
• Coursera UC Davis GIS Specialization
• ArcGIS MOOCS

I also like UrbanViz's mappy stuff.

You want to look into Geospatial Information Systems (GIS), which is on the technical side of the discipline of Geography. Specifically, you could say that GIS is an applied sub-discipline of Physical Geography that deals in digital cartography. There are certainly professional uses outside of academia that relate to your objectives, as I've occasionally seen job ads from think tanks and government contracting firms looking for GIS specialists.

I am not sure how much there is academically in the way of IR/Security-focused conflict mapping, but I do know from my forays into Geography that there is a sort of political aversion in Geography departments to engaging with anything conflict or security-related. As a result, most academic GIS training focuses specifically on the more politically "comfortable" topics of environmental mapping and public health mapping. That caveat aside, if you want to know more about GIS and its applications, you can check out the discussions on r/geography and r/GIS.

In terms of the less technical side of geography, there are plenty of popular authors (Robert D. Kaplan, Parag Khanna, and Tim Marshall all come to mind) and private research/consulting firms (Stratfor, Jane's, etc.) that use geographic explanations for conflicts and security challenges in international relations. However, research in this vein tends not to be taken all that seriously in academia. People in both Political Science and Geography departments will, for different reasons, likely dissuade you from making arguments in that direction. If you're interested in this line of inquiry, you should check out r/geopolitics and refer to their wiki for resources.

As for resources outside of reddit, FEMA and the UN both have free online courses for using GIS in crisis and emergency contexts. Both are available to the general public, and you might want to look into these in order to learn some basic vocabulary and concepts. I've taken both and would recommend them. There is also a specialization on Coursera from UC Davis that gives a broad overview.

It's been 10 years since I also got my Computer Science degree and did a number of jobs since then, none of them related to GIS, although it was always something on my "to learn" list. Last year I took a Coursera specialization https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis? to learn the basics (this is something that I'd recommend, as opposed to jumping straight to the coding without a firm understanding of the concepts) and then got a job developing GIS applications and am very happy with it. Before you decide on a masters, here are some free resources about GIS and related development that you could take a look and see if it's something that really interests you: https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/arcuser/arcgis-api-for-python-core-concepts-python-apis-and-rest/ , https://www.qgis.org/en/site/ , https://docs.qgis.org/3.4/en/docs/pyqgis_developer_cookbook/intro.html , https://leafletjs.com/examples.html

for basics of Python, I'd recommend these:

• https://automatetheboringstuff.com/
• https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/
  • https://runestone.academy/runestone/static/thinkcspy/index.html - interactive version

for resources specific to your area, I don't have personal recommendation, but searching online gives many resources like

• https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gis
• https://automating-gis-processes.github.io/CSC18/
• https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/93506/python-resource-for-remote-sensing
• https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/gis/python

GIS Geography is a good resource: https://gisgeography.com/learn-gis/

As others have said, ESRI has good training on their website(much of it free) and the publish a lot of content to YouTube.

Coursera has a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) specialization course taught by UC Davis or a GIS, Mapping, and Spatial Analysis specialization course taught by University of Toronto.

As an online component of their GIS book "Mastering ArcGIS Pro", McGraw Hill has some online tutorial videos here. (The audio quality isn't the best, but it is great to see the instructor go through the motions for each action).

MIT OPEN Courseware has some GIS Tutorials for both ArcGIS and QGIS here.

There are a number of classes on Udemy.

Depending on what your end goals for environmental analysis are, there are also some short specialized classes in geospatial analysis offered by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (here - wildfire analysis), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (here - GIS for disasters), the US Census Bureau (mostly OpenStreetMap and QGIS, but the dataset review is good here)