Systematic development of education and training programs: a key to successful GIS development

As GIS technology is adopted by organizations, consideration and effort should be directed to strategic planning and design issues regarding system development. Often these efforts take the form of systems analysis or user requirements analyses. This paper establishes a framework for similarly assessing the educational and training needs of staff and project personnel. Education and training are fundamental to the successful implementation of any GIS project. The process of assessing educational needs is termed a learner-needs assessment. A case study of a learner needs assessment for a large state agency in Minnesota is presented to demonstrate the application and utility of such an approach. -Authors