School of Geography and Environmental Science students can develop programming or scripting skills through online courses such as MOOCs or the Esri Virtual Campus.

Outline of Activity

Graduates often embark on careers within the GIS, engineering, geoscience and surveying industries. These industries, and many others, look favourably on graduates with coding/programming skills. This EDGE activity rewards students who develop programming or scripting skills through online courses such as MOOCs or the Esri Virtual Campus. All students within the School of Geography and Environmental Sciences can take web-based Esri Virtual Campus courses for free. Examples of courses include Python Scripting for Geoprocessing Workflows, Python Scripting for Map Automation, Creating Python Scripts for Raster Analysis and Basics of JavaScript Web Apps.

Learning Outcomes

This activity is not restricted to Python but rewards students for developing programming skills such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript or Java. These languages enable students to create websites or applications that can make procedures more efficient or permit students to publish content online.

Examples include:

https://www.mooc-list.com/tags/python

https://www.coursera.org/learn/python

https://www.mooc-list.com/course/introduction-python-absolute-beginner-edx-0

https://www.datacamp.com/

https://www.esri.com/training/catalog/search/

Assessment Details

Students are required to submit proof of successful course completion.

For instance, Esri Virtual Campus courses provide a certificate after successful completion of an exam.

Students must also submit a 300 word reflection of the activity.

Level of Commitment

Students will need to be able to demonstrate 20 hours. This can be from completing multiple short courses.

Course time 18 hours

300 word self reflection 2 hours

Contact

Dr Paul McKenzie

Senior Lecturer

School of Geog & Environmental Scs

Coleraine

G160

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On 16 Oct 2025