Free and Open Source Software in the Development Education Space

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) – digital systems that enable manipulating, analysing and representing geographic information – are important tools that can help societies make better decisions to address global sustainable development challenges such as migration, food security and climate change. While GIS have become an important support tool in the global development and humanitarian sector, at present very few higher education programmes in development studies or related fields integrate it as a key component. Yet, as the technology develops into maturity, highly promising opportunities arise for the use and proliferation of free and open source geospatial software in development education and practice. Of particular importance is the easy accessibility of this technology to institutions in the Global South at little to no cost, which can contribute to reducing global spatial inequalities in access to educational resources through its adaptation into online education. With limited resources, a full suite of GIS tools are freely available to the public, students, educators and practitioners alike, which can offer a powerful way to visualise, understand and better analyse myriad complex human and environmental interactions and issues. However, in spite of the ongoing technological advancements in both the practice of online education and free software, research on the application of open source GIS and open data to the educational sphere remains under-developed. Furthermore, online education practices do not draw extensively from the opportunities presented by such technology, and little is done to fully exploit their potential to enhance the evidence-base for decisions. The intersection of all three of these domains (that is, free and open source geospatial software, online education and development education), in the context of the co-production of an online GIS module by Irish and Vietnamese university educators is the concern of this paper.