Critical issues in undergraduate cartographic education: Analysis of final tests and oral examinations

This article identifies critical issues in cartographic education based on analysis of more than 1,300 anonymized didactic tests and anonymized results of final oral examinations of university courses since 2010. To analyze the students’ results, the tasks in the tests and questions in the oral examination were categorized in the cartographic and didactic aspects based on the revised Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy. The quantitative analysis shows that students achieve better results in tasks that test their procedural knowledge compared to tasks in which they must demonstrate a conceptual knowledge dimension. Students achieve the worst results in tasks that test their factual knowledge, while poorer results are also associated with tasks that require mathematical calculations. In the cartographic curriculum categories, the form of their delivery (lectures vs. exercises and seminars) plays a more important role than the nature (e.g. difficulty) of the content. This will undoubtedly place greater demands on the planning of cartographic education in the future.