Yes And....there are no obstacles only creative solutions 

Without education many of us would not be where we are today. 

Education is about investing in society and building community for the future. We need education more than ever during times of disruption and transformation. It is what brings us together, allows for open dialogues and different perspectives in safe spaces so that we can explore what is needed today and find the solutions for tomorrow.

Creating a healthy sustainable and liveable planet that benefits all can be achieved through education.

During my time as Programme Director of a Master's Geospatial programme my goal has been to enhance education - making it fit for the future - by building scholarly communities that foster interdisciplinary research and education in Spatial Data and GIS/Earth Observation Science. The end goal of the geospatial learning hub was to enable for deeper insights into the challenges we face at a societal level while also considering solutions for creating a healthy sustainable and liveable planet. To achieve this we need to cross boundaries and work together in the polycene era.  In 2025 we launched an updated programme. 

Read more on how we achieved this in the education projects section below. 

Courses and training offered

Throughout my career I have developed and taught a variety of courses, provided training and conducted workshops covering topics related to GIS, Health, Data and Education.  For more information see the  range of courses, workshops and trainings listed below.  

Courses Taught and/or Developed

ITC - University of Twente, Netherlands in the Master's of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation and the Master's in Spatial Engineering.

• 2021-2026 Geo-Health (5EC ) and see CRC Press Book

• 2021-2025 Geo-Health (7EC) and see CRC Press Book

• 2021-2025 Global Challenges, Local Actions: Keynote Lecture Geo-Health

• 2022-2025 Spatial Engineering: Resilient Cities

• 2024-2025 Spatial Engineering: Climate Transition in the Ijssel Delta

• Spatial Engineering: Food Security: Geo-Health for healthy food environments

Short courses

• 2024 Masterclass Geospatial for Planetary Health. Geoversity short course (< 10 hours).

  • Video: Disasters  and health: responding to health risks associated with disasters. 

  • Video: Mapping vector-borne diseases: malaria as an example.

  • Video: Mapping accessibility to health services.

  • Video: Tackling health and disease with geographic information and geospatial technologies. 

• 2022 ERASMUS+ (3EC) Teaching in multi-modal learning environments. 10 Sessions (online). Apr-Jul

• 2021 Training the Trainer: Digital Earth Africa Training. 10 Sessions (online). June-Aug 2021.

• 2021 “Women are doing it for themselves”: Identifying strengths, activating strengths, applying strengths. 4 Sessions (hybrid). May-Dec 2021

Courses Taught and/or Developed

During my time as a visiting professor in the Europubhealth+ programme Integration Module at the EHESP School of Public Health in Rennes (France)  (2025):

Lecture in

• Climate Health, Disaster Health, One Health? Geodata and geospatial technologies for health 

Workshop in

• GIS for Health introduces students to GIS using the John Snow Cholera data. Adapted from chapter 1 in Blanford, J.I. (2024) Geographic information, geospatial technologies and spatial data science for health. Pp376. CRC Taylor & Francis.

The data can be found on: https://github.com/jb2018/geohealth_snow2025

Video - Intro to QGIS

Video - Explore data in QGIS

Video - Analysis using point pattern methods in QGIS

Text - GIS for Health Workshop QGIS or ArcGIS Pro

As part of “Building innovative and sustainable solutions to global health challenges“ developed a case study on:

• Heat and health in Rennes within the context of environmental injustice

Courses Taught and/or Developed

While in the USA at the Pennsylvania State University, I taught in the Master's of Geographic Information Systems  (MGIS). Some of the courses I taught in the program as well as in the undergrad geography program are listed below.

• Geog 586 Geographic Information Analysis (OER) 

• Geog 583 Geospatial System Analysis and Design

• Geog 591 GIS for Analysis of Health  

• Geog 596A Adviser for Individual Studies (Capstone Project I: Proposal Development for MGIS online students)

• Geog 596B Adviser for individual Studies (Capstone Project II: Capstone Project for MGIS online students)

• Geog 596 Individual Studies (Independent Study for Resident Students)

• Geog 364 Spatial Analysis 

• Workshop - Capstone Development Workshop for MGIS Students

• Workshop - Advising in an online environment workshop for Faculty

Lectures in

• 2019 SoDA 502 Social Data Analytics (SoDA)

• 2018-2019 Geog 260 (Geographic Information in a Changing World)

• 2018-2019 Geog 500 (Introduction to Geographic Research)

• 2019 ENT597 Infectious Disease Dynamics

• 2019 Global Health, College of Medicine (Hershey, PA)

• 2017 Geog160: Geography and the role of health dynamics for food security

• 2013 Demography Seminar Course

• 2013 HHD 397: Introductory Global Leadership Seminar, PSU (in Global Leadership Initiative, College of Health and Human Development).

• 2011 Introduction to Global Health 

Workshops and Training

• Geospatial Education Session. What education and training is needed for a new generation of geospatial scientists? AGILE, Glasgow, 2024

• GI Science education in an AI world: educating scientists and practitioners. GIScience, Leeds, September 2023

• Geospatial Education – Geospatial Education 5.0: New Paradigms for Geospatial Training and Education. AGILE, Delft, June 2023

• Geospatial Education – Transitioning from emergency online to a new normal. AGILE, Lithuania, 2022

• Geospatial Education – Teaching through a pandemic and beyond.  AGILE, Greece. 2021

• Global Conversations on GIScience Education: Global. Panel 3: Convergence, 2021

• Global Conversations on GIScience Education: EU Region. Panel 2: Implementation Pedagogies for Resilient GIScience Education, 2020

• Global Conversations on GIScience Education: EU Region.  Panel 1: Pedagogies for Resilient GIScience Education, 2020

• Online Symposium: Advancing geospatial education for working professionals on campus and online. UCGIS, 2020

• Spatial Data Science Symposium: “Setting the Spatial Data Science Agenda”

GeoHealth

• GIS, Earth Observation and AI for Health Workshop. 2026, Hamburg, Germany 

• GIS for health Workshop using QGIS or ArcGIS Pro, 2025, Rennes, France 

• Geo-Health for disaster epidemiology: the link between disasters and health and minimizing short and long-term risks. 2024. EUMA - European Master on Disaster Management, Enschede, NL.

• Remote sensing and Spatial data for planetary health (Blanford, Paris, Kioko). WEON Epidemiology & Planetary Health. 28 to 30 May 2024 in Zeist 

• GeoHealth for Health Practitioners, 2023, Hengelo, NL

• GIS and EOS for planetary health - linking geographic information and health, ECTHM, Nov 2023, Utrecht, NL 

• “Women are doing it for themselves”: Identifying strengths, activating strengths, applying strengths (Aug/Sep 2021) 

• TRELIS for Women in the Geospatial Sciences: Building Leaders for tomorrow

Awards

• Gladys Snyder Education Award "Sensing our environment: connecting the digital world with the real world" 

Student projects.

See past student projects 

Innovations in Education

Thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020-2023 where the world shutdown, many educational institutes pivoted their education from face-to-face learning to one that is online. This has lead to the need to transform education to one that is more flexible and utilises the newer technologies.  Alongside this technological advances have also lead to disruptions in society that requires us to adjust how we learn and teach. Global education and training expenditure is set to reach at least $10 trillion by 2030.  Are higher education institutes ready to transform their education for the new demands?

We examine how to transform educational programmes to be fit for the future. We looked at: 

• what processes are needed to bring about changes into a programme?

• how to transform educational programmes to be fit for the future?

• what EdTech and AI is needed to enhance student experiences online and in the classroom?

Bringing about reforms in education systems during times of disruptions is one of the most difficult tasks anyone can face. Tackling educational reforms in times of uncertainty is a daunting task.  How to start? How to bring about transformations? But also what to offer and how to offer our programmes?

Education Projects 

See some of the education projects we have run and past workshops we have hosted.

• SMARTER EDUCATION. In this project we explored different ways in which to enhance our education programmes to ensure we were fit for the future, flexible and geared to enhancing student learning while also supporting teachers. This work was part of the the Smarter Academic Year (SlimmerCollege Jaar), Netherlands. Pilots included:

  • Redevelop curricula (fewer teaching hours, different didactical methods, but still achieve same level, aiming at learning results rather than contact hours.),

  • More appreciation for online teaching (blended learning, use experiences from lockdowns, how positive experiences be used to reduce the year with four weeks),

  • Programmatic assessment and reduction of resits. (use of portfolios, assessment at programme level, fewer periods for repeat exams, no thesis supervision in the summer months, strict deadlines for theses).

• TRANSFORMING A MASTER'S PROGRAMME . In 2025 we launched an updated programme. How we modernised our programme and innovated the curriculum can be found in Blanford  and Verplanke (2023); King et al., (2024), and Primera et al., (2025)). We used a 5-phase plan and created a curriculum development process with the education team. 

• ENHANCING GEOSPATIAL LITERACY. Making GIS accessible to the health sciences and beyond. Breaking down barriers and making GIS accessible across disciplines- in particular the health sciences. John Snow's 1854 Cholera map has become a universal example of how maps transformed the field of epidemiology, yet GIS is often absent from health curriculums.  We are enhancing the uptake of GIS in the health sciences and beyond through training and education. See Blanford (2024), Blanford (2025).

• BUILDING EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITIES

  • Co-founder of geoversity an online education and resource platform (ITC, University Twente, Netherlands).

  • Creating an e!GeoCommunity Education. E!GEO Talk Series to address important aspects of e!education 

  • Development of an Online Student Center (2016). Development of an online student center that promotes engaged student scholarship through the development of an interactive community-based environment that enables the exchange of knowledge, enhances collaborations between students, fosters learning through interaction, builds professional social networks, and enriches the “university experience” for online students through opportunities to participate in events on campus. 

Sources

• Blanford, J.I. (2025) Temperature variations across space and time: making statistics fun with geographic information and spatial analysis. Primus. 35(3):308-328. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10511970.2025.2477280 

• Blanford, J.I. (2024) Geographic information, geospatial technologies and spatial data science for health. Pp376. CRC Taylor & Francis.

• Frazier, A., Nelson, T., Kedron, P., Shook, E. Dodge, S., Murray, A., Goodchild, M., Battersby, S., Blanford, J., Claramunt, C., Holler, J., Koylu, C., Lee, A., Manson, S., Salap-Ayca, S., Wilson, J., Zhao, B.,  Bennett, L., Cabrera-Arnau, C., Franklin, R., McKenzie, G., Miller, H., Oshan, T., Rey S., Rowe, F., Shook, E.,  Spielman, S., Xu, W., (2025) Evolving Curriculum for GIScience in an Age of Disruptions. Transactions in GIS. 29:e70048. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/tgis.70048

• Primera, R., Blanford, J.I., Lemmens, R., Ronzhin, S. (2025) A Comprehensive Approach to Curriculum Development: Integrating a 5-Phase Redesign, ABC Learning Design, and GeoCourseHub Ontology for Multi-Modal Geospatial Education. SEFI Conference, Tempere, Finland. September 2025

• King, J., Primera, R., Verkroost, M.J., Verheij, L.,Cray, L., Blanford, J.I. (2024) Collaborative course (re)design: adapting learning design to support curriculum transformations. SEFI Conference, Lausanne, Switzerland. September 2024.

• Blanford, J.I. and Verplanke, J. (2023) Transforming curriculums for an age of multi-modal education: a 5-phase approach. SEFI conference, Dublin, Ireland. September 2023

• Blanford, J.I. Bowlick, F., Gidudu, A., Gould, M., Griffin, A.L., Kar, G., Kemp, K., de Róiste, M., de Sabbata, S., Sinton, D., Strobl, J., Tate, N., Toppen, F., Unwin, D. (2021) LOCKDOWN LESSONS: an international conversation on resilient GI science teaching. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. 46 (1):7-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2021.1986687 

• Blanford, J.I., Kennelly, P., King, B., Miller, D., Bracken, T. (2020) Merits of capstone projects in an online graduate program for working professionals. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. 44(1):45-69. 

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