Teaching GIS to Beginners (Quickly)

Photo by Alejandro Escamilla on Unsplash

Yesterday, I had the great honor to teach a two-hour workshop on QGIS to people working for local non-profits, city agencies, and universities in an event sponsored by the Dallas Public Library.

Most of these professionals had no experience with maps or mapping other than using Google Maps to get around town or seeing maps in the newspaper or online. They hadn’t made that transition to creating their own maps, which is what a GIS allows you to do.

But they were motivated to learn and excited by the possibilities even if they didn’t fully understand how to harness those possibilities.

So, where to begin?

The common model of instruction is to first lecture on key topics, making sure foundational concepts are well understood before they are put into practice.

That isn’t our practice.

After getting through some quick introductions, I started with a guided exercise to put some polygons on the map, in this case, the polygons in question were the Dallas City Council Districts, courtesy of the Dallas Open Data Portal.

At first, the map looks horrible.

Dallas City Council Districts after first loading into QGIS

Then I walked them through basic styling and labeling before releasing them to make their own changes until they end up with something nicer and, more importantly, something of their own.

A little more styling to make the map more interesting

Then I introduced key concepts like:

• What is a GIS?
• Why is it useful?
• What are the different spatial types (points, lines, and polygons)?

I do this AFTER they’ve already worked with the tool and some data so they have an example to anchor the context I’m trying to provide.

I also provide another example that encapsulates some of the basic ideas I’m introducing:

A rough map I use as an instructional tool to talk about points, lines, and polygons, as well as prime the discussion for base maps and their value

This example, while not a fully designed map, has some of the key ideas we’re going to be talking about, visually representing the key learning points from the brief lecture I provide.

I then go back to the map from the first exercise to ask, what is our map missing?

This primes them to think more critically about the display of spatial information and identify elements they would want to include. The most important element I want them to recognize is the lack of a clear base map to show spatial context for the Dallas City Council District shapes we’ve displayed.

I lead them through a guided exercise in adding the base map plug-in QuickMapServices and, as before, allow them to add their own base map to their project.

Dallas City Council District map styled with base map and labels using QuickMapServices plug-in

At this point, I thought we’d be at about our time, but we ended up with 30 minutes left and questions about how to do this work with data from another source. In class, I went to the open data portal for the City of McKinney and downloaded the shapefile for the location of McKinney parks. I had them walk me through loading the data into QGIS.

Location of parks in McKinney, TX, helpfully styled in QGIS with a lovely green

Helpfully, QGIS automatically styled it a lovely shade of green and the exercise served as a good review of the process we’d just gone through.

I decided to add this as a final activity to the class. In future classes, after we finish the base map discussion and walk-through, I’m asking them to:

1. Start a new blank project
2. Add a base map of their choice, preferably one with broad coverage
3. Find data that interests them, either from the list of sites I share in class or from their own research online
4. Load and style what they have before sharing in a simple show and tell to the class (if time)

We then went through a quick wrap-up with a short discussion of open source vs proprietary software as it relates to GIS and asked them to reflect on QGIS. I resourced them with links to tutorials, books, and blogs to get them going and gave them my contact information before asking for their feedback. They kindly applauded and I took the last questions before we said goodbye.

The key points I want to emphasize from this experience, reinforced from both what participants said and how they acted:

1. Do, don’t say. It doesn’t matter how much time we have for class, getting into the doing as soon as possible makes the learning easier and the time spent more productive
2. Sharing is caring. Taking time for people to meet and greet each other, especially people near them, can feel like a waste of precious time, but in the long run, it helps bring people together so they can ask and give help in the course of the class, easing the burden on me as the instructor, but also helping everyone relax into the very difficult and challenging experience of learning.
3. Simple is best. Short exercises with outcomes presented upfront through clear, concise steps, repeated as often as is necessary without judgement, ensures learning. The “one-and-done” approach to lecturing often leaves people lost, particularly those without the context necessary to integrate the information they received.
4. Time-boxing is my friend. I’m glad for the limited time. It curbed my natural tendencies to digress and derail the conversation into interesting, but confusing side tracks. We had a simple plan and I only went down the side roads that led us back to our destination.

I’m looking forward to continuing these classes and expanding on them with the support of the Dallas Public Library and the Dallas community. My thanks to the people who came out to class. You’re welcome to look over the slides for class and please follow our Eventbrite if you’re interested in learning about future training opportunities in DFW.