Can University Students Provide High-Quality Geoinformation? First Results of an Empirical Study

It is extremely common nowadays to employ online map services to plan transportation routes, track sports activities, search the location of shops, to give some examples. Does this growing use of interactive cartography to acquire geographic information also correspond to a greater ability of people to produce spatial data? The following contribution aims to investigate a heterogeneous group of people’s familiarity with online maps. To this end, an experiment which requested participants to identify the position of specific geographic features on maps embedded on an online survey was conducted. The aim was to assess whether their knowledge of GIS affects the quality of their mapping activity. The experiment involved about two hundred students from the University of Udine (Italy) and took place partially in person and partially remotely. The students, enrolled in various university courses, differ in having varying degrees of exposure to geography and GIS in their educational path. In the article, after a brief presentation of the experiment, we will first describe respondents’ characteristics, such as demographics, education and computer skills, and then analyze the positional accuracy of the spatial data they provided. Finally, we will assess participation and data quality in relation to the experiment’s characteristics. The results reveal that the method of supervision and GIS training are two important factors for the provision of high-quality geographic information.