The GIS programs at Central Washington University (CWU) treat open science and free and open source software as an important part of the curriculum, from beginning to advanced courses. CWU offers a Bachelor of Science degree in GIScience, as well as a GIS Certificate that can be added on to any major program. In class, students have the option to complete assignments using the software that best meets their needs, preferences, and career goals. This variety of tools includes QGIS, PostGIS, GDAL, GeoDa, and popular proprietary software. Many of the courses use open textbooks.
Our lab makes many GIS instructional videos available on YouTube via a Creative Commons license. We hope they will be a useful resource for students, faculty, and professionals. You can view them on the CWU Geography channel at this link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnovwU4oaVyRSaADFyNTOaQ
We welcome collaborations with any other universities who would like to exchange knowledge, guest lectures, datasets, or research ideas and projects. Partnerships with universities in Iberoamerica are especially welcome, as many of our students and faculty are proficient in Spanish and have professional or personal connections to this region.
The following paper, presented at FOSS4G 2021, explains how GIS was implemented in the curriculum at CWU. It lists specific tools, plugins, and commands covered in the different GIS courses. https://www.int-arch-photogramm-remote-sens-spatial-inf-sci.net/XLVI-4-W2-2021/127/2021/
