Leveraging AGOL to Prepare GIS Students for the Workforce

CSA's outreach team are leading an educational outreach initiative to address the need for students at OU to gain hands-on experience in Web GIS through hosting workshops focused exclusively on cloud-based GIS concepts and workflows, which is one of the five key trends in GIS identified by Esri Education Manager, Dr. Joseph Kerski.

Based on polling of GIS and remote sensing professors in DGES, GIS courses taught primarily using Desktop GIS software.  

Jonathan is a GIS major graduating in December 2023. CSA's outreach team recently began helping Jonathan with web-based GIS questions that arose as part of his research for the department.

For my capstone project, I'm using GIS and inputting variables such as rainfall chronology, existing radar locations, and geography to work toward a final suitability layer which can hopefully express areas in greatest need of weather radars.

• During your time as a student, which GIS software are you taught to use for assignments, labs, and projects?
  • ArcGIS Pro
• As a student, have you been taught web-based GIS concepts (i.e. publishing maps online, creating web-mapping applications, StoryMaps, etc.)?
  • Very minimally. A little bit of story map/web map experience in one class
• Prior to help sessions with CSA, did you have any experience working in ArcGIS Online?
  • No, I did not have prior experience with online

Dr. Joseph Kerski visited with professors in the digital humanities in Fall 2022. CSA took advantage of this opportunity by organizing an in-person crash course in ArcGIS Online led by Dr. Kerski and Esri higher education account manager Mark Stewart.

The course was geared toward OU students with little to no experience with GIS; the goal of the course was to teach students GIS and spatial thinking skills using the ArcGIS Online platform. All students, faculty and staff with the University of Oklahoma have access to the university’s ArcGIS Online license.

Students were given hands-on experience with creating and navigating web maps, cloud data sources, and using Arcade expressions for customized symbology using material from Dr. Kerski’s open short course, which is freely available online.

30 students from 6 different departments on campus registered for the course - Geography/GIS/ES; Biology; Anthropology; African American Studies; Civil Engineering; Microbiology & Plant Biology, demonstrating the desire to learn web mapping spans beyond students studying GIS.    

Rose earned her BA in GIS in 2020 and her MS in Geography and Environmental Sustainability in 2022. Today she works as an OSP Engineer for a company that installs fiber-optic internet for communities.

We use field maps to show what has been built in the field and dashboards to better visualize that data. Basically, anything we do in GIS is mind blowing to most people in the company. Even the dashboards amaze them. We recently made the shift from Google Earth, and anyone not used to GIS is so impressed with the capabilities and deliverables we can create.

• During your time as a student, which GIS software are you taught to use for assignments, labs, and projects?
  • As a grad student I was taught in ArcGIS Pro
• As a student, were you taught web-based GIS concepts (i.e. publishing maps online, creating web-mapping applications, StoryMaps, etc.)?
  • No, I did not learn any web based GIS in my courses
• Which GIS software do you use at work?
  • We primarily design in Pro. We have a fiber management system that is currently only built for Desktop. We use AGOL a lot and use it to collaborate with other organizations, but we are starting our shift to the portal. Slowly, but surely.

ArcGIS StoryMaps is a powerful outreach tool for introducing web-based GIS concepts and workflows to non-GIS users who might ordinarily feel intimidated by the idea of using GIS. The blend of narrative text with other multimedia content present in StoryMaps disguises the underlying GIS necessary for the most impactful stories.

In recognizing that most data, regardless of discipline, have a locational component, CSA partnered with the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability to introduce learners in the digital and geohumanities to the geospatial tools available to all university students and faculty.

Over a series of 4 in-person workshops, we first listened to the goals and specific needs of each workshop attendee, which are broadly categorized below:

1. How do I make data that can be added to a map?
2. How do I make a webmap?
3. How can I add my historic imagery to a StoryMap?
4. How do I make a map that pans to different areas of interest as the reader scrolls?
5. How do I share this with the public?

Overall, I know how to create the “story” part of the StoryMap, but would like to learn how to plot points on a GIS map, transfer location data into a map (e.g. census data), counties, coordinates, embed plat maps, etc.

After learning about the specific goals of attendees, the outreach team was able to work with each attendee and teach them how to access their AGOL account, how to create a webmap in AGOL and how to publish material from ArcGIS Pro to AGOL.

After the very basics were covered, students were shown how to make their stories even more engaging by adding features such as swipe maps and maps that update as the reader scrolls through the story.

1. The desire to learn web-based GIS is present across campus
2. Supplementing traditional desktop-oriented GIS courses with web-based GIS workshops gives students looking to enter the workforce experience with the tools used by employers
3. ArcGIS StoryMaps makes GIS more accessible to non-GIS users and can be used as a gentle introduction to GIS concepts and workflows