Hello everyone! My name is Rob and I am the research coordinator for this project. This is the 2nd study we've conducted with the Geospatial Semester (GSS). The first study focused on the cognitive and neural effects of GSS on spatial thinking. With this 2nd study, we are asking higher level questions about the effect of GSS on concept formation and complex syllogistic reasoning. We will start data collection this coming summer for our first cohort of participants. Thanks and let me know if you have any questions about the video—I would love to tell you more about this amazing project.

Here are some questions for you to answer after watching the video:

1) what is your favorite part of the video and why?

2) what are some ways you use spatial thinking in your daily life? In your career?

3) if we are able to detect knowledge retention and concept formation via neural patterns, how could this fit in with other methods of knowledge assessments (e.g. standardized tests, essay questions, etc.)? 

This project (and video) is simply amazing. I am curious as to whether student's performance in other subject areas, especially math, improves or changes- especially in the high school courses, such as geometry?

Rob et al., Thanks for providing a stimulating example of how multiple fields can come together to advance our knowledge of learning. I'm sure it must be difficult to obtain sufficient sample sizes of subjects to be able to compare the (I bet) complex fMRI results. Are there some novel statistical challenges in doing this? Also, I'm wondering whether your choice of spatial reasoning for this project was based on an inherent interest in how humans process spatial information and change their processing through exposure to the experiences such as GSS, or whether there is concordance in the cognitive neuroscience community that spatial reasoning (as compared to hosts of other types of reasoning that can be evaluated using fMRI) is a particularly good choice for analyzing learning?

Thanks,

      Lou 

Hi Rob and team,

Very interesting!  At the start do you see a wide variety of spatial reasoning skill in the high school students you engage or are high school students fairly uniform in the spatial abilities?  Are there any differences with respect to gender or perceived mathematical ability or success in school which connects with spatial reasoning?  

I also found your interest in the comparisons between the teachers and the students very interesting!  

Interesting project.  Who is your partner at Dartmouth.  I am working on an EPSCoR with Peter Tse and other on the Neural Basis of Attention and would like to make sure they are connected.

So interesting to use fMRI. Has this been tried with any other sort of instruction, and what sort of results have been obtained?

Hello Ms. Dinh and Mr. Cortes,

This looks like a fascinating project! Are you able to elaborate more on the Geospatial Semester itself? The video seems to show it as a computer-based course. What types of tasks/mapping are students exposed to? Is the course meant for a certain grade level? Is it a graduation requirement or an elective? What are the prerequisites?

While getting fMRI data will be revealing, did you find any difficulties in obtaining consent for these procedures? How do you handle medical privacy and balance this with publishing results?

I saw in an earlier post here that the first time this was done that you had data on math anxiety? Any details you can share about that?

Thank you

I'll leave your latter questions for Rob and Nhi to answer.  Here's some more detail about the Geospatial Semester.  It is offered to high school seniors (although a few highly motivated juniors sometimes participate).  It is an elective course, but students can earn dual enrollment credit from James Madison University.  We've been running this project since 2005.  There are no prerequisites and we often see students who aren't necessarily the highest academic achievers perform very well (the persistent academic achievers sometimes struggle with the open-ended aspects of the course - having no right answer when you're used to chasing the right answer can be disconcerting!).  Students in the class learn basic GIS techniques and progress from doing short exercises or tutorials to longer scenario-based problems (evacuating an area in response to a chemical spill or examining the evolving demographics of a large city).  The course culminates with students pursuing a large-scale, independent project of their own choosing, usually with a local connection or component.  JMU faculty are regular visitors to the high school classes and provide project mentoring and guidance.