Demystifying GIS project management.

On a daily basis, teachers act as project managers in the sense that they are leading a group of students toward a specific goal: mastery of specific learning objectives in a course. WSA/GIS projects are structured around the project-based learning model, and the role of a teacher managing such a project, becomes increasingly similiar to that of the project manager.In fact the methodology in this case study, a teacher can easily plan and track these sorts of events in an organized fashion.

[ back to Work/Site Alliance - Community Based GIS Education ]

A project is a process that is intended to come to an end and have a finite life, while the product or service of the project is generally intended to have a long or indefinite life. A project is undertaken to achieve a specific goal, has a defined scope of work and outcomes, can be accomplished within a specified time frame, utilizes human effort and a limited set of resources and is characterized by a sequence of activities. This project management Case Study provides the following:

• An introduction to the basic elements of project management, including  considerations for teachers and the classroom environment;

•  Exercises in using project management microsoft project software; and

•  Project management tools and resources you can tailor for your use in the W/SA Case Studies and in your own projects

This case study requires a basic understanding of geographic information systems and ArcView 3.x.If you are unfamiliar with either of these,we recommend you read our Training Manual and complete the accompanying exercises before proceeding with this case study.

• Document (ManEd.PDF - 1.05 Mb) of this case study in Adobe Acrobat Reader format.

• Data used in  this case study (Project_Mgt.zip - 949 Kb)

• Microsoft Project (Licensed Software),  an extension for ArcView that contains useful spatial operation tools. It is developed, collected, or modified by Mike DeLaune, Oregon Department of Forestry.

Please read the Frequently Asked Questions for the Case Studies.

This case study developed by W/SA with contributions by the following;

• Dr.Yichun Xie, Director, IGRE at Eastern Michigan University.
• Beverly Hunter, Consultant to W/SA
• Dr.Yiyi Sun,Visitng Scholar,IGRE
• IGRE Staff.