Using Geographic Information Systems to Transform Teaching and Learning

Wendy Guan, Center for Geographic AnalysisAmy Cohen, Harvard School of Public Health

Paul Cote, Harvard Design SchoolCarla Tishler, Harvard Business School

June 23, 2011

• 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)

CGA: Spatially Enabling Research and Teaching

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CGA Basic Services• Maintaining help desks in both campuses;• Consulting with students, faculty, and staff on

research and teaching projects 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.

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

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 AfricaMap and other sources.

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/

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.

Population

Environment

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

Basemaps

Historical Data 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.

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).

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CGA Help DeskWhere:

Cambridge Campus Rm K-00A, Lower LevelKnafel Building , CGIS1737 Cambridge Street ,Cambridge, MA 02138and

Longwood Campus Micro 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

GIS at HSPH

Broad Street cholera outbreak, London, 1854

GIS & the Origins of Public Health

Source: Wikimedia Commons

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

GIS@HSPH: Courses

1. 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

2. Geographical Information Using ARCGIS, BIO504*, Sumeeta Srinivasan

*No longer offered

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

IT Support for GIS:Software tools available at HSPH

• ArcGis• ERDAS Imagine• Google Earth• Geocoding• Statistical packages with specialized spatial

analysis procedures

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

Effects of the Built Environment on Health and Health Behaviors

Student work:Peter James, Environmental Health and Epidemiology, HSPH

Proximity to businesses, on foot

County sprawl

Obesity rates

Air Pollution and Asthma

Proximity of subjects to air monitoring stations

Student work:Rima Habre,Environmental Health, HSPH

Health and Food Access

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

BMI Distribution in Boston Youth

Student work:Dustin Duncan, Department of Society, Human Development,and Health, HSPH

GIS & Public Health: The Future, What Students and Faculty Say

Core competency for any analyst

dealing with quantitative data

Applicable to almost every field in public

health

Necessary competency for

my career

Promoting a Culture of Information Stewardship

At the Graduate School of Design

Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Paul Cote

Harvard University Graduate School of

Design

250 Architecture 50 Urban Planning

100 Urban Design 100 Landscape

500 Design Students

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

A Knowledge Engine

Information Lifecycle in Design (Business as Usual)

Few Resources Fit for Re-Use

End of Term

Final Documents+ 20 Minute Presentation

Bulk of Knowledge is Lost

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

Synthesis / Study:MapsDigital 3D ModelsPhysical 3D ModelsSimulation Models

Working Drafts:Adobe ProjectsGIS ProjectsVideo CompositionsRenderings & VideoSources / Bibliography

Start INDIVIDUALS ADD COHERENCE TO INFORMATION

Collect Resources:Site PhotosGIS DataCAD DataDocumentsProcess Understanding

LACK OF PREDICTABLE ORGANIZATION

AND DOCUMENTATION

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Promoting a culture of information stewardship

Two Front Strategy:

1. Courses and Studio Support

2. Maintain a rich environment for self help and sharing

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Courses & Core Studio Support:

GSD2201: Site Representation and Research

Workflows for Cultivating Information in Design and Planning Practice

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Course & Studio Support: GSD2201 Site Representation and ResearchWorkflows for Cultivating Information in Design and Planning Activities

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Course & Studio Support: GSD2201 Site Representation and ResearchWorkflows for Cultivating Information in Design and Planning Activities

Wor

kflow

Tool

s

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Course & Studio Support: GSD2201 Site Representation and ResearchWorkflows for Cultivating Information in Design and Planning Activities

Wor

kflow

Tool

s

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Demo of course web site and student projects in Google Earth

Course & Studio Support: GSD2201 Site Representation and ResearchWorkflows for Cultivating Information in Design and Planning Activities

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Flagship GIS Course

GSD6322: Fundamentals of GIS. Theory and Applications

Critical Viewpoint on GIS as a Way of Knowing

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GSD6322: Fundamentals of Geographic Information SystemsGIS as a Way of Knowing

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GSD6322: Fundamentals of Geographic Information SystemsGIS as a Way of Knowing

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GSD6322: Fundamentals of Geographic Information SystemsGIS as a Way of Knowing

Translation of problem into Conceptual and Procedural Models

Eric Beaton (09)

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GSD6322: Fundamentals of Geographic Information SystemsGIS as a Way of Knowing

Estimation of spatially explicit implications of models.

Eric Beaton (09)

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GSD6322: Fundamentals of Geographic Information SystemsGIS as a Way of Knowing

Eric Beaton (09)

Deriving new information based on spatial relationships.

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Maintaining an Environment of Data and Tools

Self Service GIS Tutorials on the Web

GSD Data Collection

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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

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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

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Global Data Visualization (GDV)• Research

– Harvard undergraduate– doctoral student– HBS Baker Library

• Mapping research data to countries• Slides from CGA• Animations and design HBS

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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

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Global Data Visualization (GDV)A quick walkthrough