Today, a total of 52 new students in the UNIGIS MSc and UNIGISprofessional certificate programmes finished their introductory orientation workshops at the University of Salzburg. Since intensive communication, mutual support and working in virtually connected groups is absolutely essential for success in a distance learning program, getting to know each other well is one key objective during these kick-off workshops.
The agenda kept everybody busy with exploring one’s own motivation and curricular options, working through individual SWOT analyses and elective GIS software options, as well as establishing Web 2.0 communications and exploring the benefits of an ePortfolio.
Students from a wide variety of backgrounds including Cartography, Planning, Biology, Archeology, IT, Environmental Studies, Forestry, Geography and many others joined in their common objective to enhance their professional qualifications and careers with on emphasis on Geoinformatics, leveraging Geospatial Science and Technologies to tackle their mission and tasks from an explicit spatial perspective.
While spatial is not any more special, ‘geospatial’ today is even more important to provide universal ‘context’ for our lives and personal roles in our environments, societies and professions.