1 / 47

Using Geographic Information Systems to Transform Teaching and Learning

Using Geographic Information Systems to Transform Teaching and Learning. Wendy Guan, Center for Geographic Analysis Amy Cohen, Harvard School of Public Health Paul Cote, Harvard Design School Carla Tishler, Harvard Business School June 23, 2011. CGA: Spatially Enabling

burt
Download Presentation

Using Geographic Information Systems to Transform Teaching and Learning

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Using Geographic Information Systems to Transform Teaching and Learning Wendy Guan, Center for Geographic Analysis Amy Cohen, Harvard School of Public Health Paul Cote, Harvard Design School Carla Tishler, Harvard Business School June 23, 2011

  2. CGA: Spatially Enabling Research and Teaching • Founded in 2006 • A member organization of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) • Serves the entire University – anyone with a HUID • Supports research and teaching with geospatial technology (often called geographic information systems or GIS)

  3. CGA Basic Services • Maintaining help desks in both campuses; • Consulting with students, faculty, and staff on research and teachingprojects and grant proposals; • Providing non-credit group instructions in geospatial software applications on a regular basis; • Assessing, organizing, financing for, and maintaining university site licenses for software; • Providing hardware and support for geospatial tools; • Undertaking initiatives that improve the university infrastructure in relation to geographic analysis.

  4. CGA Training • Credit courses at FAS, SEAS, HSPH and DCE • Non-credit training every Friday: 2-hour instruction and hands-on labs, 10 topics • Summer and Winter 10-day GIS Institutes • J-term 4-day GIS Camp for undergraduates • Customized GIS modules for non-GIS courses • Annual spring conference on a major topic in GIS

  5. Fall, 2010Course: African LandscapeProfessor: Suzanne Blier Ben Lewis provided a guest lecture to teach students with no GIS background how to bring geospatial materials into their course blogs. Students were taught how to bring materials from AfricaMap into Google Earth and Google MyMaps for mark up, addition and manipulation. From there students were shown how to bring live or static maps into their blogs to create arguments supported by information from AfricaMapand other sources.

  6. Visualizing global oil with Google Earth Jeff Blossom gave a presentation "Using Google Earth as a Classroom Tool“ at the Oil and the Contemporary Globe (August, 2009) workshop. Workshop attendees were K – 12 educators, learning how to incorporate oil related subjects into their teaching. Global oil datasets were prepared, and Google Earth was used to visualize global oil production, consumption, pipeline locations, GDP, and population. The data is available for download: http://maps.cga.harvard.edu/oil/

  7. Digital Atlas of Roman & Medieval Civilization Guoping Huang and Giovanni Zambotti conducted DARMC workshops teaching students majoring in history how to geo-reference historical maps and turn paper maps into digital GIS datasets.

  8. ChinaMap – an online system for study and analysis of Modern China Lex Berman gave lectures about ChinaMap to: Advanced GIS Workshop [Gov 1009]  Spring 2011 Harvard Extension School - Geographic Communication Today DCE ISMT-E155, Spring 2011 Harvard MIT Chinese Politics Research Workshop,  GSAS,  Spring 2011 Population Environment

  9. ChinaMap – an online system for study and analysis of Modern China Above: Qing Dynasty Entry Exams locations (symbol size shows density), overlayed on Physiographic Macroregions and the Qing Courier Routes and Stops. Right: AMS 1:250K topo map (pre-1960) overlayed with modern railways, high speed rail, and urban area (purple) near the city of Luoyang. Historical Data Basemaps

  10. SEAS ES 103 Spatial Analysis of Environmental and Social Systems • Sumeeta Srinivasan teaches several GIS and spatial analysis courses in FAS, SEAS and HSPH. • Above: Conditional Plot shows the relationship between the Gender Development Index GDI, and Human development index (HDI) in Nepal with respect to spatial distribution of Infant mortality ration (IMR). • Left: understanding attractive vs. repulsive point patterns helps the study of phenomena as widely varied as crimes (are burglaries and motor vehicle thefts attractive?) or plant species (certain species tend to grow together, others away from each other).

  11. CGA Help Desk Where: Cambridge CampusRm K-00A, Lower LevelKnafel Building , CGIS1737 Cambridge Street ,Cambridge, MA 02138and   Longwood CampusMicro Lab, Lower LevelKresge Building677 Huntington AvenueBoston, MA 02115 When: Tuesday, 1:30pm - 4:00pm Email: contact@help.cga.harvard.edu Website: http://gis.harvard.edu

  12. GIS at HSPH

  13. Broad Street cholera outbreak, London, 1854 GIS & the Origins of Public Health Source: Wikimedia Commons

  14. GIS at HSPH • Environmental Health • Pollution exposure, natural & built environment • Society, Health and Human Development • Demography, neighborhood effects • Epidemiology • Geographic patterns of disease and exposure • Global Health and Population • Demography, health and geography • Biostatistics • Spatial analysis

  15. GIS@HSPH: Courses • Intro. to Spatial Methods in Public Health, GHP534, Marcia Castro • Spatial autocorrelation in health-related data • Clustering patterns • Spatial estimation of disease rates • GIS and Remote Sensing applied to health data • Geographical Information Using ARCGIS, BIO504*, SumeetaSrinivasan *No longer offered

  16. CGA support for GIS@HSPH • Several workshops taught at HSPH • Weekly office hours at HSPH • Students attend summer Institute at CGA • Resources used by students and researchers • CGA website with self-help resources • CGA newsletter • GIS user groups

  17. IT Support for GIS:Software tools available at HSPH • ArcGis • ERDAS Imagine • Google Earth • Geocoding • Statistical packages with specialized spatial analysis procedures

  18. Examples of Student Work • Effects of the Built Environment on Health and Health Behaviors • Air Pollution and Asthma • Neighborhood and school environments and youth physical activity levels. • Green Space and BMI in Cairo, Egypt • Health and Food Access

  19. Effects of the Built Environment on Health and Health Behaviors Student work: Peter James, Environmental Health and Epidemiology, HSPH Obesity rates Proximity to businesses, on foot County sprawl

  20. Air Pollution and Asthma Student work: RimaHabre, Environmental Health, HSPH Proximity of subjects to air monitoring stations

  21. Health and Food Access Student work: Caitlin Eicher, Dept. of Society, Human Development, and Health, HSPH

  22. BMI Distribution in Boston Youth Student work: Dustin Duncan, Department of Society, Human Development,and Health, HSPH

  23. GIS & Public Health: The Future, What Students and Faculty Say Applicable to almost every field in public health Core competency for any analyst dealing with quantitative data Necessary competency for my career

  24. Promoting a Culture of Information StewardshipAt the Graduate School of Design Paul Cote Harvard UniversityGraduate School of Design

  25. Harvard University Graduate School of Design

  26. 500 Design Students 250 Architecture 50 Urban Planning 100 Urban Design 100 Landscape

  27. A Knowledge Engine GSD Studio Culture: 75% of Student effort focused on one studio problem 100 Studios per year at the GSD Focus on representing, understanding, modifying and evaluating places: Appearance & performance Many Many Models are Made!!! An intense replica of the greater world of design

  28. Information Lifecycle in Design (Business as Usual) Start Individuals Add Coherence to Information • Synthesis / Study: • Maps • Digital 3D Models • Physical 3D Models • Simulation Models • Working Drafts: • Adobe Projects • GIS Projects • Video Compositions • Renderings & Video • Sources / Bibliography • Collect Resources: • Site Photos • GIS Data • CAD Data • Documents • Process Understanding Lack of Predictable Organization And Documentation End of Term Return on Investment Bulk of Knowledge is Lost Few Resources Fit for Re-Use Final Documents + 20 Minute Presentation

  29. Promoting a culture of information stewardship Two Front Strategy: Courses and Studio Support Maintain a rich environment for self help and sharing

  30. Courses & Core Studio Support: GSD2201: Site Representation and Research Workflowsfor Cultivating Information in Design and Planning Practice

  31. Course & Studio Support: GSD2201 Site Representation and Research Workflows for Cultivating Information in Design and Planning Activities

  32. Course & Studio Support: GSD2201 Site Representation and Research Workflows for Cultivating Information in Design and Planning Activities Workflow Tools

  33. Course & Studio Support: GSD2201 Site Representation and Research Workflows for Cultivating Information in Design and Planning Activities Workflow Tools

  34. Course & Studio Support: GSD2201 Site Representation and Research Workflows for Cultivating Information in Design and Planning Activities Demo of course web site and student projects in Google Earth

  35. Flagship GIS Course GSD6322: Fundamentals of GIS. Theory and Applications Critical Viewpoint on GIS as a Way of Knowing

  36. GSD6322: Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems GIS as a Way of Knowing

  37. GSD6322: Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems GIS as a Way of Knowing

  38. GSD6322: Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems GIS as a Way of Knowing Translation of problem into Conceptual and Procedural Models Eric Beaton (09)

  39. GSD6322: Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems GIS as a Way of Knowing Estimation of spatially explicit implications of models. Eric Beaton (09)

  40. GSD6322: Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems GIS as a Way of Knowing Deriving new information based on spatial relationships. Eric Beaton (09)

  41. Maintaining an Environment of Data and Tools Self Service GIS Tutorials on the Web GSD Data Collection

  42. Harvard Business School • Carla Tishler, Director of Program Innovation • Educational Technology Group • 18 team members • Serving: 200 faculty, 1800 MBA students, 8,000+ Executive Education participants • Producing: 25-30 courseware and platforms annually

  43. Global Data Visualization (GDV) • Business History course: Entrepreneurship and Global Capitalism • Elective curriculum and doctoral course • Student understanding of globalization is a key theme at HBS • The GDV Globalization of business from the 19th century to the present • Faculty member Geoff Jones, Professor; Director of Research, Entrepreneurial Management • Low-tech, but make an impact • Three versions—next version will use Google and be more modern

  44. Global Data Visualization (GDV) • Research • Harvard undergraduate • doctoral student • HBS Baker Library • Mapping research data to countries • Slides from CGA • Animations and design HBS

  45. Global Data Visualization (GDV) • 37 datasets • Political economy • Urbanization, literacy, League of Nations • Commodities • Bananas, coffee, oil • Global Corporations • Coke, Singer, Pampers • Managing Distance • Sea Cables, telegraphs, mobile phone use

  46. Global Data Visualization (GDV) A quick walkthrough

More Related