Syllabus

GISC 6385 – GIS Theories, Models and Issues

Fall, 2010

Instructor: Dr. Denis J. Dean

Office: 3.212 Green Hall
Phone: (972) 883-6852
Email: denis.dean@utdallas.edu

Purpose: GISC 6385 is designed to provide students with an appreciation of how an applied
geospatial science issue is addressed in both theory and practice. This will be accomplished via
a semester-long case study. This will start by exploring the literature pertinent to the case study,
synthesizing what that literature tells us about issues, developing models to implement ideas
from the literature, and using those models in a Monte Carlo-type analysis designed to provide
insights into the issues raised throughout the case study.

Time and Place: 4:00 to 6:45 PM Mondays; Green Hall. See the schedule for details
regarding rooms for specific days.

Prerequisites: Both GISC 6381 (Geographic Information System Fundamentals) and

GISC 6382 (Applied Geographic Information Systems) are required prerequisites for this class.
It is assumed that these prerequisites will have given students a solid understanding and sound
hands-on skills with ESRI’s ArcGIS software.

Students will benefit from any computer programming experience that they may have; however,
it is not assumed that any student has programming experience coming into GISC 6385.
Similarly, students will benefit from any statistical skills they may have prior to coming into
GISC 6385, but students are not assumed to have such skills.

Grading: Students will be graded based on their performance on a single midterm exam
(15%), a series of homework assignments (40%), their final project (25%), two presentations
they give to the rest of the class (10%), and class participation (10%).

Attendance Policy: The instructor will not take attendance during class. However, students
are responsible for all material covered in all classes, including classes they may miss. In
addition, a portion of each student’s grade will be determined by how well (and how often) they
participate in class discussions (see above), so missing classes can impact your grade. In
addition, please note the following:

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 1. The instructor will not repeat lecture materials for students who miss classes. It is the
responsibility of the students to make arrangements with their fellow students to obtain
the notes for any classes they miss.
2. The web presence of this class is minimal at best. Students should not rely on the web to
provide them with any or all of the materials covered in class.
3. Some class sessions require the students to deliver presentations to the rest of the class.
Students missing their presentation dates will receive zeros for those presentations.

Cheating: Every student in GISC 6385 is honor-bound to do everything in their power to

avoid even the appearance of cheating. Each student must understand that by turning in an
assignment, exam or any other material to the instructor, he or she is asserting that the work is
their own, and that no portion of it was plagiarized from other students, web resources, published
works, or any other source. By signing their work, students are attesting to this fact.
To this end, the instructor will not accept unsigned material tuned in by students.

UTDallas Rules, Policies and Procedures: Go to http://go.utdallas.edu/syllabus-policies for a

listing of the university’s policy and procedures relevant to class syllabi.

Tentative Class Schedule: The schedule on the following page is tentative; unforeseen events
may cause changes. However, the general sequence of events should follow the schedule shown
here.

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 Date Room Topic Due
Aug. 23 3.206 Class introduction and overview

Aug. 30 3.602 Case study: Procedures, problem

overview, and literature review
assignment

Sept. 6 *** NO CLASS (Labor Day) ***

Sept. 13 3.602 Literature review presentations Literature review presentations

Sept. 20 3.602* Monte Carlo model design

Sept. 27 3.602 Implementation: Generating Data 1

Oct. 4 3.602 Implementation: Generating Data 2

Oct. 11 3.602 *** MIDTERM EXAM ***

Oct. 18 3.602 Implementation: Analyzing Data 1 Data Generation Submodel

Oct. 25 3.602 Implementation: Analyzing Data 2

Nov. 1 3.602 Implementation: Analyzing Data 3

Nov. 8 3.602 Implementation: Measuring Res. 1 Data Analysis Submodel

Nov. 15 3.602 Implementation: Measuring Res. 2

Nov. 22 3.602 Implementation: Analyzing Results Measuring Results Submodel

Nov. 29 3.602 Final Wrap-up Monte Carlo data

Dec. 6 3.602 Final presentations Final presentations and final project

report

*
Class will start at 5:00 PM on September 20, 2010.

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