Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in education around the world is a relatively recent phenomenon. Settled almost entirely since 1990, the landscape is marked by pedagogical and technological trailblazing by enterprising educators who have overcome numerous challenges to teach about GIS and teach with GIS. They do so to promote spatial thinking throughout education. They have done so in a wide variety of settings, to students of all ages from primary, secondary, college, university, and after-school programs, in lecture halls, computer laboratories, on mobile devices, and in the field.  Our Esri education team has been actively supporting these educators and this movement since 1992, in partnership and in collaboration with the community of educators, globally.  For all of the variety of the ways GIS is being used in education, a remarkably small number of themes are common. In the paper and set of 3 videos below, I identify those themes that have helped to create a growing, vibrant international GIS education community. These include a focus on problem-solving, inquiry-driven pedagogical techniques that use real-world data and geotechnologies to analyze spatial patterns on a local to global scale. They focus on classroom, community, and careers, and promote scholarship, citizenship, and artisanship. Yet despite progress over the past 35 years, not only do challenges remain, but forces are acting that could confine spatial thinking in education to a relatively small part of educational practice and research through 2030. These forces include an overreliance upon standardized assessments, budgetary constraints that curtail necessary components such as fieldwork and IT support, a lack of a curricular fit or home for GI (Geographic Information), and a continued reliance on funding and staffing educational institutions by disciplinary and departmental models which at times hinder interdisciplinary tools and approaches such as those offered through GIS.  The videos and paper makes recommendations about what needs to happen to advance the use of GIS in education at all levels. This includes establishing a disciplinary home for GIS throughout education, an increased emphasis on portfolios and other authentic assessment instruments, and the funding and establishment of a center that promotes research in the implementation and effectiveness of GIS in education. The future of GIS in education will also be impacted by community science or volunteered geographic information, the Web GIS environment, mobile computing, open data portals, and open application programming interfaces (APIs). Spatial analysis with GIS addresses the essential issues of the 21st Century. Natural and human-caused hazards, urban sprawl, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, public safety, water quality and availability, biodiversity loss, healthy economies, and other key and complex issues of our time can be better understood through the spatial framework. Spatial thinking and analysis must take place throughout education, not only to have a positive impact on teaching and learning, but also on society as a whole, to benefit people and the planet. If this does not occur, we will be on uncertain footing in education, and we will be on precarious ground as a global society. As I state in the following series of videos, and in a paper that follows, without spatial thinking and spatial analysis in education and in society, we will essentially be sleepwalking into the future. Part 1 of 3:  https://youtu.be/7PaEEJOENHI?si=SlYFdIYYLIHb-Wwm  Part 2 of 3:  https://youtu.be/YOv8REdT2go?si=0avo5KMQ1X34rtGD  Part 3 of 3:  https://youtu.be/nXuzxDVFkE8?si=hHCjd4-vZyE2Wifd  https://gispoint.de/fileadmin/user_upload/paper_gis_open/537510017.pdf is a complete article, expanding on the themes in the videos that I have authored on this subject, for those who want to dig deeper into what I feel is an important topic. What do you think we should be doing as a community to actively support, promote, and encourage spatial thinking and analysis in education, with implications for the greater society? I welcome your comments!   --Joseph Kerski  ... View more

GIS is changing, and perhaps the tools and workflows changing GIS the most these days is Artificial Intelligence, or AI.  I conducted a hands-on AI GIS (or "Geo AI") workshop recently and am using this space to share the contents with the wider community.  The slides are posted at this location and contain: 1.  The definitions and concepts around Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Large Language Models, and Geo AI.  2.   How GeoAI is changing GIS and workflows in organizations, and related career pathways. 3.  Why instructors should be teaching with AI tools. 4.  How instructors can teach with AI tools inside the ArcGIS ecosystem.  I advocate starting with Gen AI Survey123 tools and continuing with ArcGIS Online, and then to ArcGIS Pro.  Start with the pretrained models; plenty of them exist, are compelling, and are important for all of us to understand.  5.  How students can learn with AI tools inside the ArcGIS ecosystem. 6.  Two activities - GenAI Survey123 field survey generation, and feature extraction from imagery, are included in this workshop, with links to many more. Included in the workshop are points of discussion about the benefits and the concerns related to AI, such as below: AI presents us amazing capabilities and has already transformed decision-making and the makeup of much day-to-day GIS work.    We don’t get to go backwards in technology: AI tools are here to stay and are remarkable.   We never have been able to go backwards in GIS or other tools; there is no "click here to run this tool in ArcInfo Version 6" or "click here to do this overlay with scribecoat and peelcoat" (to date me even further!). Use AI tools wisely: Understand what goes into each model and algorithm.  Read the metadata.  If you are a creator of these tools, make sure you populate the metadata for others to use. Also, as AI tools can be quite complex, make sure you explain them as clearly as possible.  Metadata doesn't help if nobody understands it. I created a video reflection on the topic of AI in GIS education, here:  •  https://youtu.be/rnofTJEGw_0?si=FBKhlEWc9zjEidmW On the Spatial Reserves data blog,  https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com, we have been writing about where can I find geospatial data, how do I know if it is any good, and societal implications for many years. These implications include copyright, location privacy, ethics, and AI.   We have recently written about an AI powered open data portal:  https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com/2024/05/13/aipowered-open-data-portal-for-washington-dc/  and reviewed Dr Dawn Wright's work and writings about Why AI needs to be digitally resilient: https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com/2024/04/15/reflections-on-why-ai-needs-to-be-digitally-resilient/ In the workshop, I include resources on how to keep learning in this rapidly advancing area, such as one that I consider to be an excellent first one-stop for GeoAI in education, the resource my teammate Canserina Kurnia created, entitled "Unlocking the power of Geospatial AI": • https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/resources-for-unlocking-the-power-of-geospatial-ai/bap/1293098 Several Learn ArcGIS Lessons already exist in the lesson library at https://learn.arcgis.com. These include classifying objects using Deep Learning in ArcGIS Pro:  • https://www.esri.com/training/catalog/6410c0524d750615175c0b58/classifying-objects-using-deeplearning-in-arcgis-pro/  I thank my colleagues inside and outside Esri who are blazing pathways in this field, and to those at Esri who helped me prepare the contents for this workshop.  I trust that this will be useful to the readers of this education community blog.  ... View more

I created 16 new lessons to support a fundamentals of GIS short course.   I have rigorously tested, taught, and refined these lessons over the past few months and wanted to make them available to the wider community so that you can use or modify them for your own purposes.  The lessons are aimed at undergraduate-level learners, but I have also used them for the GIS professional community, and one could also use them for upper secondary school students.  The content covers are wide variety of themes (water, population, hazards, more) and scales (local to global), and is focused on web-based Software as a Service (SaaS) GIS, specifically, ArcGIS Online. The tools used include the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer, ArcGIS StoryMaps, dashboards, Survey123, instant apps, and other tools. The goal is that working through these activities, you will gain confidence in mapping, spatial thinking, working with spatial data, spatial analysis, saving, sharing, and communicating the results of your work. To access all content, see this ArcGIS StoryMap collection: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/collections/b9292c1494224ff8bf8ebd31424ff917    A StoryMap collection was the perfect tool to use to allow learners to quickly and easily access the activities, which are accessed through 3 story maps that you will see in the collection.  A collection also allows me to easily update the content as needed.  I encourage you to create a StoryMap collection to support your own instruction.  Alternatively, attached to this essay are 3 PDFs containing the 16 lessons.     The short course content is as follows: Part 1:  Spatial is Special!                                                              Ways to define and conceptualize GIS                                                            What are maps?  Why are they relevant to 21st Century decision making?                                                            GIS software and organizations                                                            The whys of where                                                            Activity 1:  Spatial and attribute characteristics                                                            The modern GIS platform:   Maps, layers, apps, data services Part 2: Let’s Get Mapping!                                                            Activity 2:  A field survey, map, dashboard, and story map                                                             Activity 3:  Symbology:  Single symbol, graduated symbol, predominance                                                                maps, pie charts, ring chart maps                                                            Activity 4:   Creating expressions; analyzing change over space and time                                                            Activity 5:  Filtering data and working with isolines Part 3:  Investigating Relationships                                                            Activity 6:  Bivariate and relationship mapping                                                            Activity 7:  Analyzing relationships with scatter plots and maps  Part 4:  How to get Data into a GIS                                                             Activity 8:  Mapping a spreadsheet.  Discussion:  Vector data, imagery,                                                                      raster data                                                             Activity 9:   Creating a field survey and online map                                                             Mappy Time!  Discuss favorite maps and map-related books.   Part 5:  Communicating Your Results                                                              Demonstrate:  Web Mapping applications including Living Atlas of the                                                                      World apps                                                            Activity 10:  Creating a dashboard                                                            Activity 11:  Creating a story map                                                            Activity 12:  Spatial Analysis I:  Natural Hazards                                                                                                                        Discussion on sharing – when and how to do it   Part 6:  Spatial Analysis                                                             Activity 13:  Spatial Analysis II : Invasive species                                                             Activity 14:  Deep learning feature extraction from satellite imagery                                                             Activity 15:  Land Records Mapping, analysis, and visualization                                                             Activity 16:   3D visualization and analysis  Part 7:   GIS Workflows and Considerations                                                              GIS content organization                                                              ArcGIS Pro and GIS tools                                                                      Data quality and the ethics of mapping.                                                                Continuing your GIS journey:                                                               Resources for moving forward:                                                              Books, organizations, tutorials, associations, networks, events. One of the things I like most about using StoryMaps as teaching tools is the sidecar capabilities.  For example, in Activity 15, and in many other activities, I place the directions on the left and the interactive web map in ArcGIS Online on the right, so the student can see the instructions while they are working through the lesson on the right (or, alternatively, popping the right side into a separate tab so they will have more space in which to work).  Lastly, like many other rigorous sets of curriculum, developing the above was aided by collaboration and networking. For example, my work with the Wisconsin Land Information Association (WLIA) connected me to the wonderful Washington County Wisconsin GIS staff, who have created an amazing data portal, the data from which I used, with their permission, for the above Activity #15.   Below is a screen shot from the lessons themselves.  I look forward to your reactions. --Joseph Kerski   ... View more

A continued state of change From their inception, educational institutions have always been in a state of change.   From the founding of what are widely considered to be the oldest universities in the world, the University of Al Quaraouiyine in Fez, Morocco, founded in 859, and the University of Bologna, founded in 1088 in Bologna, Italy, and the University of Oxford (1249 to 1264), to the thousands of institutions in existence today, universities have always been responsively reinventing themselves to best serve the needs of their students and the needs of the greater society.  Today, community colleges, technical colleges, tribal colleges, and universities must grapple with societal, educational, financial, and technological forces that are changing more rapidly with each passing year, particularly in the geo/enviro/geotechnology sphere.  How can faculty, administrators, researchers, and facilities managers understand and respond to these changes so that their institutions will be relevant and vibrant for decades to come? My colleagues and I on the education team greatly value the work we are privileged to be involved in with the education community.  This work occurs at all levels, from primary to university level, all around the world, and across multiple disciplines from anthropology to zoology and just about everything in between.   We do this through making sure that GIS software is inexpensive or free, that tools are widely available, that spatial data is accessible, so that faculty and students can be successful.  We do this through a variety of means, including the provision of curricular resources, through technical and pedagogical assistance, through highlighting success stories in Esri and other publications, through face-to-face and online webinars, presentations, and workshops, through networking opportunities for the community, and in other ways.  We also do a lot of listening to the community's challenges and concerns. One Challenge One challenge facing higher education that we hear from faculty and read about in articles that is perhaps more acute now than a generation ago, or even a few years ago, is the stagnation or decline of some longstanding GIS programs.  This situation includes the geography programs where some GIS programs are housed.  Certainly, many others are growing and thriving.  However, I wish to respond here to what some of our educational colleagues have been asking me to write about, which is why this is happening, and if I have any advice moving forward.   Selected reasons for the challenge Over the past 3 years alone, I have visited 110 campuses face to face and have, along with my colleagues here at Esri, conducted hundreds more online short courses, presentations, and workshops.  Therefore, I am no educational expert, but I have amassed, thanks to conversations with you, the education community, a deep and broad understanding of the reality of the culture and institutions of teaching and learning.  I think the stagnation and decline of some programs is due to a variety of factors:  1.  In the past, institutions of higher education represented the only major way, other than on-the-job training, that people could learn GIS.  While one can argue that many people in the past learned GIS "on their own" apart from in higher education or apart from on the job, the point is that many ways exist today to learn GIS tools and methods.  These include thousands of videos, dozens of Esri and university MOOCs, thousands of self paced lessons, certificates in a wide variety of forms and styles, hundreds if not thousands of face-to-face and online college and university programs that one can choose from, and other ways.  Certainly the rise of online programs is another factor competing with your specific institution:  A student can enroll in and take courses from many rigorous, well-respected programs, offered from a university that could be halfway around the world from their own location and not requiring them to enroll in your college or university.  Thus, there are more options available to everyone.    2.  GIS software is easier to use nowadays than ever before.  Certainly the world is a complex, dynamic planet, with 8 billion humans impacting it, and therefore, GIS tools, which were created to model and understand that world, are by their nature going to be numerous and complex.  That said, though, learning GIS is vastly more accessible than it was a few years ago.  Its evolution into a cloud-based environment and ecosystem nature mean that people can learn specific components of it, rather than the entire platform. They can do so with contextual menus and wizard-driven, AI-enabled tools that are more intuitive now than ever before.  In addition, they can access imagery and vector data sets as data services, and even collect their own data via field surveys, UAVs, and heads-up digitizing.   3.  "Traditional college demographics" in many parts of the world have changed:   In certain regions, there are fewer people in their late teens and early 20s; ages which traditionally have been key for college and university enrollment.  That said, many institutes of higher education attract those who are mid-career or even late-career, and my view is that it is never too late to get into GIS.  4.  There is some GIS saturation in the market, where many government agencies, nonprofits, and industries have a stable GIS-savvy workforce.  5.  Sixty years after its creation, GIS is not seen by some as new or cutting edge any longer.  In my opinion, however, today is the most exciting time to get into GIS--with the advent of web mapping applications, a wide variety of problems to solve from the global to local scale, and AI-driven workflows, just to name a few.   6.  In some parts of the world and in some regions, changes in the economy and in the unemployment rate affect some college enrollment.  Traditionally, when economies are doing well, technical college enrollment declines as those segments in the population are already gainfully employed. 7.  There is a continued lack of awareness of geospatial technology as a viable career path.  It's still rather "hidden", isn't it?   Similar to an elevator where you get in, punch buttons, expect something to happen, and you don't think much about the technology behind it.   GIS is behind the scenes, like an elevator:  GIS powers the electricity you use, your ride share and fitness app, your package delivery, how and what you ate yesterday, supply chains that resulted in the phone you are holding and the clothes you are wearing, managing the bus you will take tomorrow morning, and much more.  8.  A related concern voiced to me by faculty is when students don't find out about GIS until halfway through their undergraduate career, posing challenges to the student in terms of time to invest and their own finances.  What if we worked on raising awareness about GIS earlier, before students even arrive on campus? My colleagues and I through our active K-12 program, in collaboration with many of you reading this, and other geomentors, are doing all we can to support and promote spatial thinking throughout all of education and society.  It is our hope that one result of these efforts will be that more students entering higher education will already know about GIS and want to pursue it on your campus.  Others I know on campuses promote GIS through "GIS Day" events, campus sustainability events, through their library, or other means. 9.  Perhaps the lack of awareness stems in part from the relatively few jobs naming GIS in the job title.  In my career, for example, I have been cartographer, geographer, adjunct faculty, and education manager: I have not had "GIS" in my job title, and the same is true for many in the profession.   That is actually a good thing, for it shows that GIS is increasingly a tool and a perspective that someone with a job title of wildlife biologist, city planner, supply chain manager, or health analyst has.  Indeed, I am seeing that GIS skills are more in demand than ever before.  10.  On a related note about the lack of awareness, many GIS programs are housed in geography departments:  Geography as a discipline as always been rather misunderstood, which doesn't help the misunderstood nature of GIS any!   Some have told me repeatedly in the past that "geography missed the boat on spatial analysis years ago by not fully embracing it".  I don't want to get into a "how to save geography" discussion here, but : (1) As a geographer, I certainly want my home discipline to thrive and be healthy.  And no, I don't want GIS to be renamed to remove the "geographic" name (though I also like spatial data science as a name) because to me the geographic is fundamental to its approach to problem solving:  It is much more than "using maps in analysis".  (2)  I feel it will benefit geography as a discipline by demonstrating to other disciplines across campus that geographic thinking is more important now than ever before, and that the "whys of where", which many disciplines want to teach, is a set of perspectives, tools, and ways of thinking that geographers can take a leadership role in on their campuses.  (3) More people will be getting into the field of geotechnologies from outside geography, as part of the widening recognition that "why where matters", the spread of GIS into other IT tools and organizational workflows, and the advent of GIS to the web and requiring people with IT and coding backgrounds.  I regularly teach GIS workshops where I ask for a show of hands indicating how many participants came from a geography undergraduate or graduate school background, and the percent of attendees at these workshops indicating this background has been declining for many years.  However, I believe that this widening diversity of backgrounds will I believe strengthen the use of GIS across education and society, and again provide those with deep knowledge about GIScience to help others--those who don't have time to take GIS courses, but want to use the tools.  Those GIS folks with a deep background can help these other folks to thoughtfully consider the choices they must make about database design, projections, symbology, classification, analysis tools, and how to most effectively communicate with GIS tools such as web mapping applications just to name a few ways they can assist. GIS is a disruptor! In education, GIS has always been a disruptive, barrier-breaking way of thinking and toolset.  This makes it extremely valuable for encouraging critical and holistic thinking, but also sometimes presents a challenge to GIS. Why?  Because GIS does not have one standard "home" in the curriculum, in departments, or in institutions.  It can be effectively housed in many different programs and schools and can even be called different things (location analytics, geomatics, geotechnologies, geomedia, GI systems, GI science, and by other names). Saluting the faculty In short, none of the stagnation and decline that is occurring in some institutions has to do with faculty not being innovative or forward-thinking.  To the contrary, the faculty I have been working with in the geotechnology space over my career have been some of the most creative people I have ever met.  I salute you all!  You are making a positive difference; you are leaders; you are helping students to become positive change agents in their future workplace and in society.  With the challenges come great opportunities for us and you to show leadership of why this all matters, now more than ever before, given the challenges we face in the world. Selected advice and food for thought I have been asked to provide some advice on these important matters.  For starters, I offer this below, but largely rely on you, the community to share your wisdom in the comments section.  You are the real experts here:   While I have served as adjunct faculty in community and tribal colleges and in universities for almost 30 years, I have never been a full-time academic and thus defer to the advice of the community.  However, I will share the following. 1.  Competition and reinvention.  While deep down I want all programs to thrive and grow, I'm a realist:  Like much else in society, education is a competitive environment affected by larger forces.   I am also, though, a firm believer in the fact that some chaos and turmoil can spark innovation and positive change.  Some departments have effectively re-branded, some have merged with others on campus, and some initiatives on campus are not even a traditional department of program (such as 10 Across at Arizona State University).   Some course titles have changed, such as the Digital Earth course I have co-created at the University of Denver, and the Beautiful Maps course at Jacksonville University.  The University of Wyoming is more effectively able to infuse enterprise, coding, and development instruction after their GIS program became part of computer science.  I advise some regional universities to focus their GIS programs on water, energy, business, or some other area in such a way as to not directly compete as just a smaller version of their big state university, but rather, to fill a unique set of needs.  In some universities, such as the University of North Carolina Charlotte, GIS is increasingly seen as key to an emerging Data Science program.  GIS can serve as a key component in what some universities are pursuing in the social implications of technology, such as the ATLAS institute at the University of Colorado.   You can read more about innovations in GIS education in this education blog space and in other Esri blogs and publications.   I think the days of a university or college saying "we've existed for 150 years and we will be around for another 150 years" and coasting on past laurels are over:  Innovation must happen for those institutions to continue into the future.  2.  Promoting geospatial technology and spatial thinking in multiple disciplines.  I believe that the best way to increase the use of GIS is not necessarily to spend all of our energy to "save" programs that are struggling, but rather to embed GIS and spatial thinking into mathematics, economics, business, earth and biological science, geography, data science, communication and media, sociology, humanities, civil engineering, planning, design, and other departments on campus.  This is increasingly happening across many campuses, large and small, throughout the world, as I detailed here in a Fine Arts department on a campus and was our goal in writing a Teaching Mathematics with Interactive Mapping book.   Part of the challenge, though, is that most campuses are still funded and staffed on a model that is contrary to the interdisciplinary nature of GIS.    3.  Articulate the value.  Be always ready to articulate the value that spatial, holistic, and critical thinking through the application of GIS to solve problems can bring to energy, water, hazards, population, land use, health, transportation, and many other areas in society, including all the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including the value it brings to your own institution.  GIS is valuable in teaching, in research, and also in campus administration, helping the campus to attract and recruit new students, be a safer place to work and to learn, saving campus energy cost, and in many other ways.   Regularly share these messages with deans, provosts, university presidents, campus safety officers, students, and colleagues of yours in other disciplines.   Sharing the above items is not meant to mitigate some of the real pain that is happening in higher education, where layoffs, closures, and funding cuts are the reality that many colleagues are facing, but my intention is to provide some hope and encouragement.  Again I certainly don't have all the answers, therefore I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this subject.   ... 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I recently conducted a full day K-12 workshop for educators.  This essay provides the content, data, and tools that I included in this workshop.  I am posting this so that the educators who participated can dig deeper into the tools after the workshop ended, but also for other educators to use.  Tenets:    Maps are analytical tools, not just reference documents.  Interactive maps through GIS foster critical, spatial, and holistic thinking.  GIS allows "what if ..." inquiry to take place.  Teaching with GIS is active problem based learning, involving community connectedness and rich field experiences.   Scale matters! Change over space and time can be grappled with using these data sets, tools, and perspectives.  Themes:  Natural hazards, energy, water, history, mathematics, invasive species, biomes, regions, transportation, weather and climate, population change, land use, change over space and time.   Morning:  Primary School Educators:   The NatGeo Esri MapMaker:  https://esriurl.com/mapmaker Esri Geoinquiries:   https://esri.com/geoinquiries The ArcGIS Living Atlas Apps https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/52ae78c57b3a4924bff9fd490d76ee10  Wayback, Sentinel-2, Water Bal, USGS Topo 10 lessons:   litter mapping, bivariate – lesson 3 and 4: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/an-introduction-to-gis-as-an-open-course-with-10/ba-p/1204626 Collect data in field > Map > Analyze > communicate:   Walkability example: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/how-walkable-is-your-community/ba-p/883382 Scatter Plots, bivariate mapping: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/examining-relationships-between-variables-charts/ba-p/1245143   ArcGIS Platform slide from Connecting GIS Workshop: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/new-workshop-and-lesson-on-connecting-surveys-maps/ba-p/1419582 Why Where Matters to students, faculty, and society: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/edd676b67f5f4c749ab3e6922bd9237a Including Living Atlas Apps. 10 strategies for teaching with GIS: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/what-are-10-key-strategies-for-teaching-gis/ba-p/1104782 10 skills important to teaching with GIS: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/what-are-the-10-most-important-gis-skills-to/ba-p/1079912 10 benefits of teaching with GIS: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/what-are-the-10-most-important-educational/ba-p/1094091 Ethics, Data, and Societal Implications:  https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com Resources to dig deeper:   Esri Press, T3G, Esri Community blog, Intermountain GIS conference, Esri Education Summit, and others.   Afternoon:  Secondary School Educators:   Esri NatGeo MapMaker:  https://esriurl.com/mapmaker The ArcGIS Living Atlas Apps: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/52ae78c57b3a4924bff9fd490d76ee10  Wayback, Sentinel-2, Water Bal, USGS Topo Selected activities from our new mathematics-mapping book: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.1201/9781003305613/teaching-mathematics-using-interactive-mapping-sandra-arlinghaus-joseph-kerski-william-arlinghaus   10 lessons:   Litter mapping, bivariate – lesson 3 and 4: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/an-introduction-to-gis-as-an-open-course-with-10/ba-p/1204626 Scatter Plots, bivariate mapping: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/examining-relationships-between-variables-charts/ba-p/1245143 Connect these tools and methods: Collect data in field > Map > Analyze > communicate:   Walkability:  https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/how-walkable-is-your-community/ba-p/883382 Resources to dig deeper:   Esri Press, T3G, Esri Community blog, Intermountain GIS conference, Esri Education Summit, and others.       ... View more