In spite of a great deal of talk these days about the ‘digital’ humanities, getting professors to embrace technology in their teaching can be a challenge. Faculty often feel that the learning curve involved is too steep, that new technology takes time away from teaching their assigned content, or that a school may not provide the needed software or bandwidth.
That said, since maps have often been part of the learning experience in History, English and other disciplines, why not incorporate online mapping and have students learn some useful technological skills at the same time? Better yet, why not design projects that engage students with their texts in new ways, provide an introduction to GIS and can allow them to work singly or in groups?
GETTING STUDENTS UP TO SPEED:
Using free online mapping tools such as ArcGIS Online, CartoDB or Google Earth, students can be taught to select basemaps, add existing layers, points and pop-up comment boxes in less than a class period. The general ease with which this can be done is reassuring to faculty without a GIS background who might question the learning curve for using this technology. With this very basic knowledge students can create Esri Story Maps that incorporate classroom texts, images, video or music to flesh out myriad assignments.
STORY MAP PROJECT POSSIBILITIES:
A main tool in my effort to promote digital humanities at St. John’s University is the Story Map. With only a brief intro to basic online web mapping, students can jump straight into creating and sharing compelling online maps. All the examples shown below were created by students as assignments in a largely freshman introductory Global History class, or a required freshman seminar.
NOTE: images are hyperlinked to the actual Story Maps
In a general history survey, students have created timelines in place of a more traditional grid.
In that same survey class which uses an interactive immersive role playing activity such as Reacting to the Past, students have mapped locations of the individuals they will be portraying (either place of birth or where major life events took place) together with textual quotes as a way of orienting them to environment and context of the activity.
In a freshman/first year seminar, students created Story Maps based on readings from Charles Dickens’ Notes on America (1842), Philip Hone’s Diary (1828-1851), An East Side Ramble by William Dean Howells (1896) or Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives (1890).
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH MAPS:
Depending on the classes involved and the time you can set aside for basic training, students can create even more sophisticated online maps, web apps and Story Maps. This would be particularly true if a class featured data driven research, something upon which traditional desktop GIS is often focused. In classes which do not feature research-based data collection, Story Maps provide a great way to incorporate GIS into a non-STEM environment. In addition, these student-created maps can be shared within your university community or with alumni or the public as one more way of showcasing student / faculty engagement.