Link – Top 10 Most Common Student-Encountered GIS Problems

I have been working with and teaching undergrad and grad students GIS for 4+ years now and have compiled a list of the 10 most frequent problems that they encounter. In my current position, I spend about 15 hours per week holding office hours in the main GIS Lab on campus, where students, staff, and faculty can visit for GIS assistance, and rarely do I have a free moment. (Well, perhaps during intercession.) I often find myself explaining the same concepts and pointing out the same resources over and over again, so I wanted to pull together this list. ESRI ArcGIS is the main software application used on campus and so many of the examples below refer to this application.

I’ve noticed all these while using slave labor (sometimes called interns) on projects. The inability manage project work just kills them as well as making assumptions. I always tell them, just ask as many questions as you like because we’ve got many years of GIS experience here in our little shop and no sense reinventing the wheel.