Geographic Information Systems Education for Non-Compute r Oriented College Student s Harold G . Campbell, Ph .D . Department of Computer Information System s Humboldt State University, Arcata, Californi a CAMPBELLH@AXE .HUMBOLDT.ED U Introduction Over the past five years, microcomputer hardware and software developments have contributed to a dramatic proliferation o f analytical resources within the area of Geographic Information Systems . This particular technology (GIS) is now available o n virtually all makes and models of personal computer products and perform under most popular operating system architectures . Th e main emphasis of GIS is to amalgamate data with vector oriented graphics in order to achieve a relatively user friendly analysis an d query environment . The advantages sought by GIS manufacturers over standard RDBMS systems is to represent information in a real world setting . Such a representation strategy (they feel) appeals to a broader range of end-users, thereby making it easier t o access information, orient data to physical locations, and conduct analyses based upon referential and spatial relationships . The dramatic explosion of GIS within a wide variety of professional disciplines has manifested a considerable level of interest b y college level students who
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