Reflections on Migrating GIS based lessons and workflows from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online

Readers of this blog and the Esri education blog are very familiar with the rapid change of the field of geospatial technologies, coupled with rapidly changing educational and workplace needs.  I make the case in this video and here in this essay that given these changes, the content and skills we must work and teach, and the means by which we do so, must also change.  Given the wide variety of tutorials and help files containing graphics and videos, networks and the tools to collaborate, ask questions, and share ideas, students, faculty, and GIS professionals have an amazing variety of learning options at their fingertips.

Therefore, and particularly for those of you who conduct training for others in your organization, for those outside your organization, or who teach in an educational institution, I do not believe we need to overly focus on tool-based approaches, such as how to geocode, how to georegister, and so on. Rather we should focus on how to solve problems using GIS.  (For a related discussion, see David DiBiase’s Stop Teaching GIS essay).  Certainly there are some core skills important for coworkers and students to be successful with GIS. But most importantly, we need to help people “learn how to learn” whether in GIS (and, I contend, in any other field), emulating the kind of resource gathering, networking, and problem solving that they will assuredly use in the workplace. 

Some might argue that writing and asking students or co-workers to go through step-by-step lessons such as the 10 that we created to support our Public Domain Data book is no longer needed.  In my experience in teaching for 30 years at the university level, I still find that this style of lesson still has a place in learning, as students using these go through an entire workflow of geographic inquiry, including asking geographic questions, gathering data, analyzing data, making decisions, making assessments, and communicating the results of their research.  Another reason why we created the public domain data lessons is so that you can place each lesson side-by-side to compare the ArcMap version and the ArcGIS Pro version.

Don’t think about just an ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro migration – but rather migrating from disconnected desktop to cloud based platform – ArcGIS Pro is a part of it, yes, but also ArcGIS Online, hub data sites and open data libraries, field tools, web mapping applications, coding, and much more.

I have used these lessons in several different universities, including at the University of Denver, and always pose a survey question about ArcGIS Pro at the end of the course.  In 95% of the responses, students have stated that they found ArcGIS Pro to be easier to learn from than ArcMap, more intuitive, and more powerful.  Several students each term tell me that the use of Pro was one of their primary reasons for taking the course, because their employer asked them to learn it.  And moving forward into the latter half of the 2020s, ArcGIS Pro will see further adoption and more importantly, further evolution. Every time it evolves, it becomes more powerful and easier to use at the same time. In fact, if your GIS tools are not simultaneously becoming more powerful and easier to use, you need to ask questions of your software provider!

As someone responsible for helping others learn GIS, you have a choice of either creating your own lessons or using existing lessons.  There are no shortage of existing lessons, ranging from the ArcGIS Learn library to shared higher education resources (such as GeoTech Center and iGETT), Esri and university MOOCs, the 10 that are in the exercises section of this blog, and many other resources.  Many of us, however, acquired the teaching role because we enjoy creating and customizing curriculum for specific courses and programs.  If you are keen on migrating some of your existing ArcMap lessons to ArcGIS Pro and Online, I did it, and so can you.  Yes, it will take some time, but I find migrations (migrations is plural here, as I have lived through many such software migrations as you perhaps have as well!) are like when you get rid of things while moving your own residence: Do you really need to take that old typewriter or couch with you? Take this opportunity to purge old content and innovate. Perhaps those of you in higher education can get a graduate student to assist you in this effort!

Perhaps equally important: Don’t feel that you have to create EVERYTHING yourself nowadays.  Think about the value of your time spent—in some weeks during your courses, your value added as an instructor might be better spent on the reflections and discussions that you add rather than you spending 20 hours developing a lesson, 95% of the contents of which is already created and curated in the Esri or another library.  Furthermore the lessons or labs that you choose to use from a library—they may be curated and updated continuously, saving you from the burden of doing so.

I have also found that my ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online lessons are shorter than the ArcMap lessons for several reasons.  The first reason is that the workflows in ArcGIS Pro are so much more logical and straightforward than in ArcMap.  In ArcMap, for example, when you needed to georegister an unprojected historical map or aerial photo, you are cast into a zone that where you may be wondering, “what step do I do first?” whereas with ArcGIS Pro, you are placed into wizard-driven “Step 1–do this, make these choices, satisfied?  If not, here are some adjustments you can make.  OK – on to Step 2…”  Ditto for hundreds of other tools and processes:  These are much easier to follow and learn from using ArcGIS Pro. 

The second reason is you don’t need to screen shot everything any longer, and in fact, I implore you to please not screen shot very much, because: (1) There are many good existing resources for use if a student gets stuck on a certain section.  In the past, I admit that all of us did have to create our own graphics and screenshots in the past because these were by and large all the students could use as instructional resources, but no longer!  (2) Students and your co-workers, being the resourceful people they are, will not read your precious screen shots very much if at all.  They know there are other resources and will find them if they have difficulty.  Of course you can provide guidance as to where these resources are, but just like anything else these days that people want to learn, such as fixing a faucet or playing the ukulele, there is a video, a graphic, a tutorial, on everything from geocoding to writing Arcade expressions and more.  (3) If you do screen shot to excess and make your lessons consequently long, you will be trapped in the continuous cycle of having to update and curate your lessons.  Please, don’t do this!  Rather, spend less time updating curriculum, and use that new-found time to create new curricular ideas, teaching techniques, and furthering your own research.

Do you feel lost in updating your course or training content based on rapidly-evolving GIS technology? It is my hope that this essay helps you navigate your way forward in these decisions.