The development of GIS education in the UK and Turkey: a comparative review

Abstract

Much of the literature on degree-level education in Geography is concentrated on ‘western’ countries such as the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. This paper, in contrast, includes a strong focus on Turkey. Its aim is to compare the development of Turkish education in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) with the UK experience. While identifying some common features, the paper also highlights important differences, particularly the extent to which Engineering, rather than Geography, has led GIS education in Turkey. The paper examines the reasons for this, and in reflecting on the possible relevance to Turkey of the UK experience, it sets out some potentially valuable ways forward in which Turkish Geography could strengthen its role in GIS provision.

Introduction and context

The main aim of this paper is to provide a comparative account of the growth and development of degree level GIS education in the UK and Turkey. Special attention is given to the extent to which the countries’ Higher Education Geography departments have included GIS within their programmes.

The literature on geographical education is largely concentrated on ‘western’ countries. Whilst this is informative, a wider understanding of the development of geographical education in other parts of the world would reveal much more about the state of the discipline and its position in Higher Education. This paper has a particular focus on GIS. GIS is potentially a key means by which Geography can contribute to the development of modern, information-oriented societies and to the economic progress of countries currently experiencing industrialisation. It therefore represents a significant asset and area of opportunity for the discipline, and so understanding how it has developed is of considerable importance. This paper compares the development of GIS education in the UK and Turkey. Turkey is a country of special interest, not only because it straddles both Europe and Asia, but also because it is a large country (population 75 million) with a very successful economy which has recently been growing at about eight percent per annum (Turkstat, 2012).

Given the importance of GIS, it is encouraging that a recent free-view supplement of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education (JGHE) is devoted entirely to current developments in GIS teaching (see tandfonline.com/jghe). However, although the supplement contains many interesting ideas on teaching and learning, it offers less by way of a historical (developmental) narrative and it also gives relatively little attention to cross-national perspectives. It is hoped, therefore, that this paper in Planet will make a distinctive and somewhat different contribution and also that it will build on a broader review of the development of Turkish Geography as a whole (Seremet and Chalkley, 2012).

This paper first outlines and reviews the historical development of GIS education in the UK and identifies some of the principal factors which have shaped its evolution. Particular reference is made to the role and status of GIS within Geography Higher Education departments and programmes. This section is then followed by a discussion of the development of GIS education in Turkey and the reasons why Geography has not achieved such a prominent position in the provision of GIS teaching. The paper’s final section briefly compares the Turkish and UK experiences and considers what the two countries might learn from each other.

Development of GIS education in the UK

Since the 1980s a great deal of energy has been devoted to the development of GIS in UK Higher Education. The primary reason for initiating GIS teaching and curriculum development was to meet the demands of GIS industries and user organizations (Morgan, 1987, Aangeenbrug, 1992, Kemp and Goodchild, 1992, Forer and Unwin, 1999) and to satisfy the growing spatial data requirements of an emerging information society (Dahlberg and Jensen 1986, Forer and Unwin 1999).

Historically, the first UK developments in GIS education were heavily influenced by US initiatives, the most important being the development of the core GIS curriculum, lead by the US National Centre for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) (Kemp and Goodchild, 1991). The first UK-based initiative in GIS education was introduced by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Regional Research Laboratories (RRLs) funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The principal aim was to provide training in the use of GIS for research purposes (Masser, 1988, Goodchild and Rhind, 1990).

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the British Computer Society (BCS) and The Association for Geographic Information (AGI) were among the UK’s other main pioneering forces for GIS education. Particularly influential was the 1987 landmark report on GIS by Richard Chorley (a geographer), which was an important milestone (Department of the Environment, 1987, Gittings, 1989). Building on Chorley’s report (Chorley, 1987), the UK’s first main GIS teaching and curriculum development project was produced by RICS through the AutoCarto Education Trust (Unwin et al., 1990). Its main aim was to provide a draft framework for GIS courses offered at undergraduate level (Unwin 1993). Although this British Syllabus was an alternative version of the NCGIA curriculum, when compared with the NCGIA it had some limitations, not least an absence of supporting lecture notes and laboratory activities (Forer and Unwin, 1999).

The lack of undergraduate support materials within the UK may reflect the level at which GIS education was initially being delivered. In UK Higher Education GIS was initially concentrated on Masters Degree courses and in support of Doctoral research programmes at institutions such as Birkbeck College, the University of Edinburgh, University College London (UCL) and the University of Durham (Rhind, 1987). Edinburgh was the first university in Europe to offer GIS courses for MSc and PhD students in 1985 (Gittings et al., 1993). The UK’s first full undergraduate GIS degree programme was established at Kingston University (at the time a Polytechnic) in 1988 (Cassettari, 1991). This was one of the world’s first full GIS undergraduate courses. Subsequently, various other universities began in the 1990s to offer GIS modules within their Geography programmes, including the University of Keele, Coventry University and Kingston University (Blakemore, 1992 and Unwin, 1993).

The “Fairy Chimney” landscape of Cappadocia in Central Anatolia

The expansion of GIS education was aided by the relevant technical infrastructure and resources. A key milestone was an agreement between the major GIS vendor, the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) and the Combined Higher Education Software Team (CHEST). Under this agreement, licensed GIS software was offered to all the UK’s HEIs at reduced rates. One of the most important results was the establishment of the well-known ArcGIS software suite as the most-widely used software in UK Higher Education. This helped overcome one of the most important problems identified by Kemp and Goodchild (1991) in the development of GIS education, namely the need for substantial amounts of money for a strong GIS infrastructure, principally software and hardware (Wise, 1991).

Further important advantages were derived from the EDINA project (http://edina.ac.uk), based in the University of Edinburgh. This made it possible for UK departments to easily access licensed digital data through their university server, thus completing an important stage in the development of GIS infrastructure in the UK (Field, 2008). These developments (CHEST and EDINA) assisted in the introduction and expansion of GIS education within many Geography departments across the UK and were one reason for the acceleration of the integration of GIS into undergraduate level degrees through the 2000s, with many Geography departments introducing GIS teaching into their programmes. This expansion was encouraged by the Royal Geographical Society and by the Geography Benchmark Statements produced by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA, 2000 and 2008). Although the QAA’s Benchmark Statements were intended to offer curriculum guidance rather than prescription, their references to GIS further strengthened the expectation that UK Geography degrees would commonly include at least some teaching on GIS. Between 2006 and 2010, GIS pedagogic development also benefited from the work of SPLINT (Spatial Literacy in Teaching), one of the UK’s 74 Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs). Although led from the University of Leicester, SPLINT had a national role in developing and disseminating best practice in GIS education. Its work was not, however, confined to Geography and it must be acknowledged that disciplines such as Computer Science and Geomatics are becoming more significant deliverers of GIS Education, not least because of new directions in GIS, such as the development of new tools and scale-free, re-usable databases in commercial GIS (Longley, 2000).

This paper has so far summarised some of the principal initiatives which have together helped to create the current GIS landscape in UK Higher Education. It is a landscape which has been developed principally, but not exclusively, within the discipline of Geography. Among the key features are 10 full undergraduate degrees in GIS (7 of which are based in Geography schools) and 22 Masters courses, all of which are based in Geography. And in statistical terms, the most important element is the inclusion of GIS in some 61 undergraduate Geography programmes, over 90 percent of the total. It is important to note that most of the GIS taught in the UK’s Geography (and Geography-related) degrees is offered within specialist GIS modules (typically at second year level) that are normally optional, and so by no means all UK Geography students graduate with a strong working knowledge of GIS and its applications. Nonetheless, from its small-scale origins in a handful of specialist Masters courses, GIS has come to occupy a well-established position in the UK’s HE Geography landscape.

Development of GIS education in Turkey

The development of GIS education in Turkey’s Universities began in the late 1990s, a decade or so later than in the UK. In common with the UK, the principal driving force was the need to build GIS expertise and to increase the numbers of graduates with the skills required to work in the GIS field. That these demands emerged later than in the UK reflects the less developed state of the Turkish economy in the 1980s and 1990s, which, in turn, was reflected in the small size of the country’s Higher Education sector, with only some 250,000 students in the early 1980s compared with the UK’s 850,000 students (OSYM, 1982 and Becher, 1987).

Figure 1: View of a GIS suite in one of Turkey’s Geography departments (2011)

The subsequent expansion in the Turkish economy and in the country’s Higher Education sector were principal drivers behind the growth of interest in GIS education. The first significant steps for Geography were made in the second half of the 1990s. In 1996, for example, the University of Istanbul’s Geography department (the largest in the country) introduced GIS modules in its post-graduate provision, and this was followed two years later with GIS becoming part of the departments undergraduate geography curriculum (Turoglu, 2008). In addition, during the last decade or so, GIS teaching has been introduced at undergraduate level to some extent in all of the country’s now 24 Geography departments and typically takes places in computing or specialist GIS laboratories (Figure 1). As in the UK, the most common curriculum approach has been for the inclusion of a second year GIS module, sometimes compulsory and sometimes optional. There are currently nine Masters in GIS in Turkey, but importantly only two are managed and led by Geography departments. Moreover, there is no full undergraduate GIS programme. However, two associate degree programmes (lasting two years) have recently been established at two state-run Turkish Universities (Anadolu University and Mehmet Akif Ersoy University), and are led principally by Engineering.

Although there is no full consensus within Turkey on the content of the GIS curriculum, the coverage of GIS modules in Geography and Engineering departments have much in common. Engineering programmes tend to have more supplementary modules (e.g. Remote Sensing, GPS and Project Management) when compared to Geography programmes, but the curricula of most GIS modules seem to reflect the content and structure of key textbooks (e.g. Longley et al., 2011). Interviews with a sample of five GIS module leaders in Turkey suggest that GIS education in Turkey has not drawn directly or substantially on either the NCGIA model or its British equivalent, both of which pre-date the growth of Turkey’s engagement with GIS education.

The first Turkish HE teaching in GIS in the late 1990s was typically based not in Geography but in departments focused on Environmental Engineering, Geology Engineering, Planning, Geodesy and Photogrammetry. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that when one looks at the present GIS landscape, the majority of provision is being delivered by engineering departments, most commonly in surveying programmes. In contrast to the UK, Turkish Geography departments made a rather slow start in the adoption of GIS into their teaching and curriculum, and although there has been clear progress in the last few years, Geography plays a less prominent role in GIS education than it does in the UK. There are a number of possible reasons for this.

The first is that Geography student numbers in Turkey remain very small, despite some recent growth. For example, in 2009–10, out of an HE sector of 3.5 million students, there were only 5,158 Geography undergraduates in Turkey (less than a third of the figure in the UK), and 629 post-graduates (OSYM, 2010). The size of Geography departments, particularly a few years ago, meant that they lacked the resources and infrastructure needed to establish and develop GIS teaching (expert staff, laboratories, hardware and software). The discipline has, therefore, been too small and not influential enough to secure a leading role in the provision of GIS education and training. It has tended to be marginalised by much larger and more powerful disciplines such as Engineering.

The problem has been not only Geography’s size but also its perceived role and purpose. In Turkey, the discipline is seen essentially as a training ground for secondary school teachers. Although in the UK Geography is widely recognised as a discipline rich in general employability skills, the same is not true in Turkey where school teaching remains the dominant field of employment for the majority of Geography graduates (Seremet and Chalkley, 2012). Geography has been seen as an academic discipline rather than as a vocational education and an appropriate qualification for entry to a range of professional careers and sectors. Geography was therefore slower to seize the opportunities created by the emergence of GIS, a pattern accentuated by the fact that 23 out of Turkey’s 24 Geography undergraduate programmes are in state-run institutions which tend to have a more academic orientation. It is the non-state Universities which are more focused on vocational and professional qualifications and at present Geography is offered in only one of these, namely Fatih University (see Seremet and Chalkley, 2012).

For all these reasons, it is Engineering-oriented programmes (particularly in Geodesy and Surveying Engineering) rather than Geography courses which in Turkey have come to be dominant in GIS provision (Yomralioglu, 2004). Engineering has also benefited from its strong professional bodies such as TMMOB, which are powerful both politically and financially, and from the disciplines’ well established links to both private sector companies and government ministries. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of the early training activities, workshops and seminars were organized by TMMOB. Engineering’s dominant position is also reinforced by its leading position in the related field of remote sensing, as illustrated by courses in Istanbul Technical University, the Middle East Technical University and Karadeniz Technical University.

Summary and Conclusions

GIS represents an area of considerable opportunity for Geography: it is an important aid to spatial thinking and analysis, it can offer careers for students and enhance departments’ employment records, and it can demonstrate vocationalism and commitment to government agendas such as innovation and economic competitiveness. It can also bring opportunities for research and consultancy, although a deeper discussion of this area is beyond the scope of this paper. From the evidence provided in this comparison between the UK and Turkey, it is clear that Geography departments in both countries have recognised the potential of GIS, which now typically features in undergraduate Geography programmes principally in the form of a specialist module. However, it is equally clear that whereas in the UK Geography occupies a prominent and leading position in the delivery of GIS education, (although other disciplines are involved), in Turkey it is Engineering which has led the development of GIS education, with Geography now trying to catch up after a slow start. The involvement of other disciplines is, of course, to be welcomed in the sense that it demonstrates the wider relevance of geographical knowledge, skills and analysis. However, particularly in Turkey, geography and its staff and students would benefit for developing a higher profile in the GIS arena. How might this be achieved?

Two main strategies are outlined below, although both of them are long term and do not represent ‘quick fixes’. The first is to develop, and strengthen, a role for GIS teaching within the Geography secondary schools curriculum. In Turkey, Geography is compulsory for all students through to the age of 16 (a position not shared with the UK). Teaching GIS in schools would be useful educationally and would also strengthen Geography’s profile as the ‘natural home’ for GIS. Moreover, this would strengthen the case for expanding the teaching of GIS within Geography degrees, many of whose graduates proceed to school teaching. A recent Turkish governmental initiative, the so-called FATIH project, aims to give every primary and secondary pupil a tablet PC and to equip all classrooms with smart boards and an internet connection (see http://fatihprojesi.meb.gov.tr). Moreover, there are already some projects supported by TUBITAK (the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) designed to improve the GIS skills of current school teachers. It seems, therefore, that the time is right for a major ‘push’ in this area, supported by both the University Geography departments and the Turkish Geographical Association. GIS teaching has also begun to emerge in UK secondary schools since around 2010, offering opportunities for an Anglo/Turkish exchange of ideas.

A second key way forward in Turkey is to use GIS as part of a long-term strategy to develop the value of Geography as a subject and see it publically recognized: this might then provide a route for the entry of Geography students to a wider range of career opportunities and professional sectors. GIS can play an important part in enhancing the perceived vocational value of Geography, not only as a preparation for teaching (important though that is) but also in providing a variety of skills which can be used in a wider range of professional settings (Whyatt et al., 2011). In this respect, Turkish Geography could learn from the UK experience where Geography has made considerable progress in addressing this wider employability agenda, although there is still more to do (Gedye and Chalkley, 2006).

For Geographers in the UK, one key lesson from this paper is the reminder that, as shown in Turkey, Geography has no ‘divine right’ to automatic leadership in GIS. While welcoming the benefits of transdisciplinary collaboration and the wider utilisation of GIS outside Geography, our discipline needs to continue to invest in GIS, to strengthen its position in our curricula and to ensure that the disciplines key role and contribution are recognised by government, the GIS industry, employers and the wider community.

The “Blue Mosque”, one of Istanbul’s best known heritage sites.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on part of the PhD research undertaken by one of the authors, Mehmet Seremet, who is grateful to the Higher Education Council of Turkey for funding his PhD programme at the University of Plymouth.