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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Fundamentals of GIS by University of California, Davis

4.8
stars
5,783 ratings

About the Course

Explore the world of spatial analysis and cartography with geographic information systems (GIS). In this class you will learn the basics of the industry’s leading software tool, ArcGIS, during four week-long modules: Week 1: Learn how GIS grew from paper maps to the globally integrated electronic software packages of today. You will install ArcGIS on your computer and learn how to use online help to answer technical questions. Week 2: Open up ArcGIS and explore data using ArcMap. Learn the foundational concepts of GIS, how to analyze data, and make your first map. Week 3: Make your own maps! Symbolize data and create an eye-catching final product. Week 4: Share your data and maps and learn to store and organize your data. Take Fundamentals of GIS as a standalone course or as part of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialization. By completing the first class in the Specialization you will gain the skills needed to succeed in the full program. Students who need an ArcGIS license will receive a non-commercial, 1 year student license for participation in this course and specialization....

Top reviews

BC

Jun 24, 2016

Excellent content, and the assignments were great as well. Even better is that now as I work through my workflows, I now have these videos to reference if I am having difficulty with anything. Cheers!

MH

Feb 3, 2025

One of the amazing platforms UC Davis provided to the students through Coursera. Enjoyed the course by doing practical work and its submission. I feel lucky to have hands on such an amazing course.

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1551 - 1575 of 1,753 Reviews for Fundamentals of GIS

By manal m g

Jun 30, 2021

good

By amir n

Jun 3, 2021

Good

By Henry W P Ñ

Feb 21, 2021

bien

By Ahmed M A E A A

Oct 14, 2020

شكرا

By AMAN V

Jun 7, 2020

good

By MOHAMMED K

Apr 12, 2020

good

By Mostafa M S

Apr 15, 2019

nice

By Nafees R

Apr 5, 2019

Good

By Marie T

Oct 23, 2018

GOOD

By ahmed y b

Nov 21, 2017

good

By Rafat A

Aug 30, 2017

good

By CLAUDE A M C

Oct 6, 2016

good

By Айдын А

Oct 10, 2024

👍

By Серіков Ш С

Oct 4, 2024

My

By Issam F m a

Jan 18, 2023

OK

By Jhohan G

Jul 11, 2016

GI

By Садуова Ж Е

Oct 4, 2024

Л

By Gurpreet S

Jul 28, 2023

.

By Lexie M O

May 3, 2017

g

By rahul

Mar 2, 2017

v

By Olawale O

Jan 13, 2017

i

By Alison J D

Jun 15, 2016

I

By Adam K

Aug 14, 2019

Excellent general introduction to the fundamentals of GIS. The course instructor gives clear explanations and is quite easy to listen to and follow. Every lesson contains everything for a foundational knowledge of the particular topic or skill, without overloading or dragging on for too long. The lecturer is also careful to preface anything that will be gone into in a later lesson, so you never feel concerned if you see all the options available but only delve into a few.

The content is well structured and the course follows an easy pace, without both too much hand holding or leaving you wondering where to go next. Having done GIS before in university, I found this was an excellent refresher to prepare me for the rest of the specialization, but that someone with relatively little knowledge could also excel.

My only critical points are that there is occasionally the odd line which you need to listen to a few times, due to jargon or the odd phrase or stutter in the flow of the lesson, but overall I found it very easy to follow. Also in the reviewed assignment, the items which would be included in the marking rubric were scattered in the explanation document, so I missed them before my initial upload.

By Oliver P

Oct 7, 2019

I enjoyed this course and was glad I did it. The material was explained clearly and the subject was covered in the right amount of detail.

I felt there are a couple of areas with room for improvement.

1. With the "Summarise this lesson" type sections, whilst this seems like a good learning tool, it just a shame it clutters up the same discussion space as technical questions. It makes it hard to scroll through and look for solutions to common problems, or help othes, as they get buried by the volumes of lesson summaries. Also I suspect it crowds out the space from getting help from the instructors, I didn't see much instructor involvement in the forum.

2. I found the early stage quite hard going just because of housekeeping issues with how to manage .mpk files, file structure and where to store the various file types. I realise some of this was covered in week 4, but it would still have been very helpful to have a bit of a talk or a document on opening the mpk files, managing things like home directories, default directories, linked folders, version control etc. Seems to me quite a fundamental part of using arcGIS that needs some good discipline.

Looking forward to the next course.

By Luis R M

Jun 10, 2017

The course is excellent and I have no words to thank you for the guiding level of detail, breakdown of the basics, provided throughout. However, I recommend to increase the number of peer reviews of our assignments to 3 or 4 reviewers, and discard the outliers. I personally disagree with one my graders and posted a comment mentioning his grading deficiency but received the downgrading nonetheless. It's unfair after so much effort to be stuck with an unfair downgrading. There should be a quality control that allows prevention or revision of grader's shortcomings. In my specific case as a reviewer, I downgraded the same person above for the opposite reason he downgraded me, but I explained the reasons in the comments section. He evaluated my work hastily based on what he applied in his assignment instead of following directions. I hope you'll read my comments and provide feedback.