This free online course will begin by introducing you to the aspects of geographic information systems. You will learn about geographic information technologies, remote sensing, and spatial analysis. You will also learn about spatial data, the disciplines contributing to GIS, and the applications of GIS. You will then further your knowledge on GIS capabilities, spatial data acquisition; data investigation, and software integration. 

Next, you will gain an understanding of how to handle real-world data, and how it can be converted to digital data. Then you will further understand how the geographic information system actually looks at data, and how to start working with geographic information systems. You will then gain insights into GIS data collections, the different data sources, the importance of data sampling methods, and the different methods of generating data for a GIS. This could be either digitization, manual digitization, or automatic digitization.

Lastly, you will further develop an understanding of data input which involves digital encoding of both geographic and attribute data. This will lead you into the global positioning system, how it receives a certain frequency, and how it measures the distance of the geographical locations.  You will further be introduced to how global positioning system determines the current position based on the signal sent by a number of satellites. You will then learn the steps to be observed in digitizing, in regards to generating data for a geographic information system.