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Ali Mansourian

Ali Mansourian

Professor

Ali Mansourian

Harmonizing GIS Education: South - North Perspectives : Lessons learnt from Mozambique, Rwanda, Sweden, and Uganda

Author

  • Petter Pilesjö
  • Ali Mansourian
  • Andrey Shindyapin
  • Antonio Alfredo Assane
  • Ernesto Lenathe Muheca
  • Gaspard Rwanyiziri
  • John Mugisha
  • Yazidhi Bamutaze
  • Bob Nakileza
  • Gilbert Maiga
  • Lydia Mazzi Kayondo
Show all

Editor

  • Ali Mansourian
  • Petter Pilesjö
  • Lars Harrie
  • Ron van Lammeren

Summary, in English

The aim of this paper is to critically examine, discuss, draw conclusions, and come up with ideas how to harmonize GIS education in order to realize the envisaged clientele benefits globally. The paper draws experiences and lessons learnt, with examples from ongoing joint GIS MSc programs/courses being implemented in Mozambique, Rwanda, and Uganda. All the five courses (3 in Uganda, 1 in Mozambique, and 1 in Rwanda) are currently financially supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) capacity development and institutional development grants. The GIS programmes and course units in the southern institutions have a high demand from clients, especially at graduate level. However, their implementation and uptake is impeded by challenges like credit systems, pedagogic approach, field work, student interaction, and software, which are discussed. It is concluded that there is still a long way to go before harmonization, allowing GIS students to freely move between different countries during their education, is possible. Low/no cost exchange of teachers and “best practice” are identified as important initial steps to reach harmonization, focusing on younger teachers, as well as exchange of material and use of open source GIS software.

Department/s

  • MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World
  • Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
  • Centre for Geographical Information Systems (GIS Centre)
  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science

Publishing year

2018-06

Language

English

Publication/Series

Geospatial Technologies for All : short papers, posters and poster abstracts of the 21th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science. Lund University 12-15 June 2018, Lund, Sweden

Document type

Conference paper

Publisher

Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe

Topic

  • Other Computer and Information Science

Keywords

  • GIS education
  • Harmonization
  • Mozambique
  • Rwanda
  • Sweden
  • Uganda

Conference name

21st AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science, 2018

Conference date

2018-06-12 - 2018-06-15

Conference place

Lund, Sweden

Status

Published