The Johns Hopkins University just announced five new online courses in GIS. The online certificate in GIS includes a GIS overview, remote sensing, introduction to spatial analysis, advanced GIS modeling and management of GIS projects. This latest online GIS course offering joins just a select few universities that offer online-only coursework.

This online program joins several other online GIS training offerings for college credit, including: GISc Online at University of London, Purdue University, Northwest Missouri Masters Program, Penn State, and UNIGIS. There are also an increasing number of online training offerings, with the ESRI Virtual Campus as the largest catalog.

Online courses have come a long way in the past decade, and with GIS capabilities advancing online rapidly, my guess is that these distance learning courses will offer many advantages over traditional coursework. The lower costs, less time consuming (without travel time), and interactive offerings provide a good balance of instruction and hands-on capability.

Read more related Spatial Sustain posts: