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We currently have the following tags (and their wiki entries) related to education, learning, research and career, and there may be more (feel free to edit and add). Often several of them occur on the same question, suggesting that there may be some confusion/overlap in the "definitions" applied here in their wikis and wiki excerpts.

For questions related to learning and resources about learning.

The acquisition of new skills and knowledge

Resources used to aid the acquisition of skills and knowledge

A tutorial is a method of transferring knowledge and may be used as a part of a learning process. More interactive and specific than a book or a lecture; a tutorial seeks to teach by example and supply the information to complete a certain task.

[no wiki]

[no wiki]

A number of questions have been asked on GIS SE to seek ideas for thesis topics:

These are usually closed as being too broad. A more suitable place to ask such questions may be the GIS Chat Room.

Questions seeking career advice have been discussed at Meta GIS SE in a Q&A titled Asking for career and/or industry advice on GIS Stack Exchange?, and the general consensus is that they are usually not a good fit for our focussed Q&A format.

A more suitable place for you to ask such questions may be our GIS Chat Room.

Searching for questions here about any specific topics of interest (e.g.Geology) may also offer you some insights.

Another useful link may be What are useful websites for scouting GIS related jobs?

Should some or all of these be made synonyms?

Some related Q&As here are:

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2 Answers 2

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Current tags , and could be synonymized to a new tag named .

The reasoning is that all the 3 tags haven't been used consistently, and my hypothesis is they will never be, because their great extent of overlapping. Additionally, I find it difficult for a new user to search [learning-resources] in the first place.

An example of excerpt for was adapted from the stats SE site.

Questions seeking information about specific (not lists of) books, papers, presentations, tutorials, videos of lectures, and other materials, regarding any subject matter that is on-topic for GIS Stack Exchange.

Searching would involve then, the use of a tag combined with keywords (e.g. [references] + book, etc.).

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Proposal Summary

  • - stays, Wiki updated and retagging as necessary so that it applies only to the topics of educational programs (ie schools, degrees, certificate) or the act/resources for educating (teaching)
  • - review questions and retag to as necessary, then make a synonym of
  • and - no change other than to review questions and ensure appropriate tag is applied (including if change to is needed)
  • - retag all questions to or except the one, update Wiki to define as "Process of supplying examples to software for the purposes of automatic classification and/or extraction."

Thoughts

I agree there's a lot of overlap and perhaps cross-application in these tags. Some disambiguation and perhaps a bit of retagging might be in order.

Education could be distinct and refer only to training and degree programs or qualifications. It could also mean from the educator/trainer perspective of how to teach things as opposed to learn them. As currently written, the wiki for it makes it a duplicate of learning-resources.

I would make learning go away. Synonym of master learning-resources. I looked through a few questions and it seems like that's the route they all go - how do I learn x, which means what resource can I use to learn x. They seem to be applied together quite often as well.

Learning-resources seems like a good tag. It's a broad category, can refer to books, tutorials, programs, webcasts, and so forth.

I think tutorials is actually specific enough to be distinct from Learning-resources. It's a very particular kind of resource. The question is use. It could be applied to questions either asking for or whose answers contain. If asking for, that seems very similar to a question for resources, but then maybe they just want a specific, step-by-step on a particular tool or process. I think either is fine.

Training could be a good tag, but with a different meaning than its current use. I think the current questions it is applied to should either become education or learning-resources depending on the question. But I also think training as a tag could have use if it were defined to apply to classification - ie providing examples for automated classification or extraction.

One thing to point out with all of these tags is that the questions they're used on tend not to be the best kind of question for SE. Extensive tutorials as answers are generally discouraged. Anything providing links or off-site resources is bound to go out of date, some more quickly than others. Others are going to be very opinion-based (best program/book/how to learn, do I need degree/cert, etc.). That's not to say they don't all have use or value, just that the categories appear to be 'high-maintenance'.

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