Welcome to our video! This summer, we are completing data collection on this longitudinal project examining cognitive and brain-based changes in high school students taking a course using GIS (Geographic Information Systems). We're excited to share information about the GIS course, the Geospatial Semester, and to share preliminary results from our first cohort of participants. Looking forward to your comments and discussion.

This is a very important research (and practice) study.  I would like to learn a little more about how students were recruited for or chose to take the GIS course.  Was it considered an advanced course?  Was it competing with other popular advanced courses?  Looking forward to seeing more of the results.  Looks very promising.  

Thanks so much for sharing your work - I really enjoyed watching your video. I found the research pointing to gender differences in spatial reasoning particularly interesting. Do you have equal numbers of male and female students participating?  How many students overall are involved? 

There are just over 200 students participating (~80 of those participants are doing the MRI measures), and it's close to 50/50 in terms of the gender breakdown.

Very encouraging to see a new, efficient lever for helping to close the gender gap in STEM! I do not know the literature but am wondering if there might be a ceiling on how much this gap can be closed if there are developmental "windows" for spatial reasoning skills that happen at younger ages? If so, can you think of modifications of your program that might be suitable for earlier grades?

This type of study is critically important for several reasons.  For one, many of us have been touting the benefits of geospatial technologies for many years, but it has not been as successful as many of us would have liked it to be. While it helps us solve many types of problems, the K-12 rarely saw its benefits and therefore it was not infused into the curriculum as widely and as much as previously hoped.  This brain research shows that what has been missing for some time in the educational system now has geospatial technologies to thank for that part of the brain activity that was dormant in the past. Perhaps we now have brain research evidence that geospatial technologies is worth infusing into the K-12 curriculum. Wondering if the Geospatial Semester that JMU uses can be used as a model for a large metropolitan area like Chicago?

Thanks for the mention of Chicago, Rich. Here on the "south side" I've been using tools such as HHMI BioIneractive's Earthviewer and Biomeviewer along with EPA GIS tools (to discover Superfund and other local sites of interest for study), and more. In doing so, I have been impressed by the degree that students struggle with spacial tasks. This is clearly worth investigating. Some are resistant to engage even. What have you found in your experience?

Interesting research! In my nonprofit company, we have dipped into GIS and, like in the K-12 environments mentioned above, it has not caught on except in limited cases. It seemed (to me) to be a technology in search of a problem. I noted that the students mentioned that they enjoyed the real world issues they were trying to solve with the technology, and I'm wondering how you introduced this element. Did you give them problems to solve, or did they choose their own? Also, how much training and set up did it take before the students were comfortable with the software? What were the challenges with the implementation? 

Thanks. 

The students actually choose their own problems and we work with them to hone the problems into something that's tractable in GIS.  We've been running this program since 2005 and we've found that teachers come to us in search of something beyond high-stakes testing-based curricula.  We provide ongoing training and support.  Many of the teachers have some prior GIS exposure, but the most successful teachers are those that are comfortable with project-based learning.  On occasion, local IT issues can be a challenge.  The students are in a year-long class - we start with simple, prescribed problems and then slowly introduce more open-ended exercises.

Semi-related to my last question, where would you like to go next with this project? 

Our next step will be to explore what is the minimal "dose" of geospatial technology to see positive impact.  We recognize that not everyone can commit an entire year to offer the Geospatial Semester (though it fills an interesting niche in the high school senior year).

We designed the Geospatial Semester to be offered by other colleges and universities in their local service regions.  We've worked with faculty members at Pacific University in Oregon to inaugurate an offering there and we're in discussion with colleagues in Arizona and Illinois.  We'd love to see others pick it up and run with it, and we're happy to help.

Thanks. I'm assuming that high school juniors and seniors appreciate an interesting, different experience and maybe have some flexibility in their schedules. I'm wondering what impact this project would have with middle school students, and if this boost in spatial thinking and reasoning could help keep girls interested and successful in STEM. 

Research always brings up so many more questions! I'm thankful that NSF funds such interesting and important studies. 

Alec Bodzin and his colleagues at Lehigh have been working on middle school applications of geospatial technologies for a while.  You might check out some of his work.

 Hi. I`m from Uruguay and I found this project very interesting. In my country we developed a GIS open source software based on gvSIG (http://www.gvsig.com/en/home) and we are now organizing a students' contest in the use of gvSIG Batoví (that`s its name http://valijas.ceibal.edu.uy/recurso/33) here in Uruguay. This is our first experience and we are very happy with it. It's a Nation-wide contest for public High School' groups (belonging to Plan Ceibal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orwN9K07XPo). Any other experience is of great importance for us and we learn from all of them.

Sergio-  Thanks for the note.  If you'll send me your e-mail address (mine is kolvoora@jmu.edu), I have a paper about the Geospatial Semester that's in Spanish that I can share with you.  Your work in Uruguay sounds very interesting.

This is a very cool project. Understanding how people benefit from learning spatial thinking is important. You may have interest in our work, which also involves introducing students to spatial thinking in their neighborhoods: http://stemforall2017.videohall.com/presentatio...

Beth - Thanks for taking the time to post.  I found your video very interesting and you've obviously found some very motivating projects for your participants.  I hope your project continues to go well.  Should you be interested in having the Univ. of Toledo host the Geospatial Semester for your local schools, we'd be happy to help you get it started.  We've been really fascinated to see where students go when given the freedom to pursue their own interests with geospatial tools.