PrintFinal Project Requirements for Geography 484: GIS Database Development
Offered by: Penn State's Online Programs in Geographic Information Systems
Penn State's Certificate Program in GIS is an 11 credit program that takes approximately one year to complete. The Certificate Program is the first year of the Master of GIS (MGIS) Program.
The typical first year schedule that our students follow is:
GEOG 482: The Nature of Geographic Information (2 credits) or GEOG 864: Professionalism in GIS&T
GEOG 483: Problem Solving with GIS (3 credits)
GEOG 484: GIS Database Development (3 credits)*
GEOG elective (3 credits)
*final project opt-out option
An alternative schedule might be:
GEOG 482: The Nature of Geographic Information (2 credits) or GEOG 864: Professionalism in GIS&T
GEOG elective (3 credits)
GEOG elective (3 credits)
GEOG elective (3 credits)
*final project opt-out option
Which option is best for me? For most the answer will be the typical first year schedule, which includes GEOG 483: Problem Solving with GIS and GEOG 484: GIS Database Development. A few others - particularly those with years of hands-on GIS experience - may not need to take GEOG 483 or GEOG 484. How to decide? Take a look at the Mastery Project located in the Directions section to the left. If you already have the knowledge and skills needed to complete that assignment without taking the class, then we recommend you choose an elective instead.
The lessons in Geography 484 cover creation and editing of vector data layers; georeferencing image files; principles of relational database design; acquiring data via the Internet; managing the coordinate systems of datasets; metadata creation and editing; attribute and spatial joins, and thematic mapping for the sake of analysis; and much more. The course is ten weeks in length and the final project spans the last four weeks of the course. The course overview of Geography 484 can be found on the Geospatial Education Progam Ofrice
ArcGIS is required to complete this project.