After-Notes of Teaching Qualitative Mapping

The new academic year (2024-2025) has arrived faster than anticipated, and the teaching experience of the Qualitative Mapping course in the Spring 2024 semester is already a pretty distant memory. I had planned to start this blog earlier, but balancing teaching and research hours while designing this website with the undergraduate student Fern Marin (a huge thank you for your invaluable help!), meant that I had to prioritize finishing those tasks before diving into creating new content. So, please note that this reflection is shaped by the time elapsed between teaching and writing, which inevitably influences which memories stand out.

So, first things first. Looking back, the course was a challenging yet rewarding endeavor. Over the past year (2023), what began as a simple idea evolved into something much more ambitious through engaging discussions with Open Educational Resources grant adviser, Sabrina Davis, weekly meetings with the pedagogical team (including Marcela Ortiz and Fern again), and sporadic conversations with colleagues, and students from the Geography and the Environment & Geographic Information Science Program. I learned that crafting effective instructional design is no small feat. Balancing objectives and learning outcomes with students’ demographics and interests proved complex. Combining traditional lectures with innovative methods—like sketches and participatory mapping—doubled the effort required to measure learning objectives and develop lesson rubrics. While online instructional design tools offered valuable guidance (here, here, and here), translating these into practical syllabus writing, selecting cross-cultural and interdisciplinary readings, and implementing an open educational resource framework was challenging.

Some of the class’s results are showcased here on the new website, capturing the essence of our work in the Projects and Activity Gallery sections. These highlight student engagement and inspiring ideas (who wouldn’t like to keep building on the Mapping Lubbock by Bike?). Long-term PhD research, like Gisou Salkhi's work on walkability (check out the article ‘University Campus as a Complex Pedestrian Dynamic Network: A Case Study of Walkability Patterns at Texas Tech University’) also features prominently. These projects responded to a complex web of questions (e.g., what makes a GIS project participatory?), rigorous methodological and theoretical explorations (participatory mapping marronage, oral history & underserved communities), and interactions with guest speakers (graduate student Lilly Demet on Critical and Creative Cartography, Dr. Candace Fujikane on Indigenous cartographies, and Dr. Nicholas Bergfeld on Lubbock disparities and mapping).

Looking ahead, there are several areas for improvement for the next term. First, maintaining cycles of learning that are closely tied to the active development of individual projects will be essential. This might involve proposing topics and tools that address key themes and methodological aspects of qualitative mapping. It became apparent that many students needed more active guidance in selecting research lines and theoretical concepts. Second, integrating mapping software more effectively is crucial, though accommodating varying proficiency levels will require careful planning. The first cohort had a mix of skills with ArcGIS, ranging from undergraduates to master's and PhD students. Third, establishing a solid theoretical foundation that would enable students to approach spatial analysis from multiple perspectives—not just through empirical research, but also through critical geography, Latin American traditions of social cartography, and the use of subjective and qualitative datasets. Given that most of the program focuses heavily on physical geography and web mapping tools like ArcGIS, it became clear that I needed to build more on theoretical foundations. In conclusion, I aim to promote a more diverse range of epistemological perspectives on space, communities, and politics. By embracing humanistic and creative approaches to mapping, I hope to inspire students to explore and represent the multifaceted dimensions of qualitative mapping in the next term.

Where all things began...

During the Spring period of 2022-2023, I taught the Senior Seminar in Geography, a capstone course for final-year Geography undergrads at Texas Tech University. This course is part of the Communication Literacy requirement that every department offers, tailored to meet their majors' professional, disciplinary, and communicational needs. The multi-layered nature of this course presents pedagogical challenges, as instructors typically expect students to come with a solid foundation in professional interaction and communication skills. When I started teaching it, I quickly reassessed this expectation when I asked the class about their previous experience presenting work outside the classroom and saw many blank stares. It became evident that Geography was not necessarily their dream career and that they faced significant uncertainty about their future after graduation.

This was also my first teaching experience at Tech, following my time as a postdoc (2021-2022) and a research associate (2022-present). Before the semester started, I spent considerable time understanding how the course was previously taught—reviewing past syllabi, consulting with the previous instructor, and examining similar courses in other majors. I then designed the course to align with the program’s expectations and the University’s standards while incorporating some innovative elements and my personal teaching style.

I won't go through the specifics of the course development in this post. However, overall, my teaching experience and student evaluations were positive, particularly regarding pedagogical interactions and content flexibility. For example, I gained valuable insights into students' trajectories in Geography and their pivotal experiences, such as: Why did they choose this major? How has Covid-19 impacted their learning and college experiences? How do they feel about their major now? What current interests and experiences will influence their decisions after graduation? I also successfully highlighted the importance of engaging with peers and the broader community, leading to participation in a university job fair, the AAG annual conference, and exchanges with our Program alumni.

Nonetheless, there were challenges, particularly with managing the diverse expectations of students preparing for careers in various sectors, including industry, non-profit, government, and academia. A significant issue, which inspired this blog and the idea for an open-access course on Qualitative Mapping, was the difficulty in finding relevant, up-to-date, and well-designed resources. Although some valuable contents and materials exist, they are often scattered across outdated or chaotic repositories. For instance, the AAG's Professional Development open course appeared promising at first, but I found it contained much irrelevant information, broken links, and outdated content not aligned with the needs of post-Covid professionals. After exploring numerous platforms, educational videos, and blogs, it became clear that this type of effort requires a "constant under-construction" approach. Instructors and students need to collaborate on accessible platforms (e.g., web platforms, social media) to showcase their class work, collect and interpret information, and share it with peers and communities beyond the university.

So, how can we address this situation? As a modest attempt to tackle the issue, we're creating the Qualitative Mapping Hub (QMH) open-access site, which will be an integral part of the course I’ll be teaching in Spring 2024. I am deeply grateful to Fern Marin, a Geography student who took the Senior Seminar, and Marcela Ortiz Cardona, a visiting PhD Scholar at Tech's STEM Core, for their invaluable support. This blog marks the beginning of our journey, which has been supported by a seed grant from the Open Educational Resources Office at Tech's Library. As we develop and teach the course, we will share our insights, challenges, and discoveries, hoping to address the online learning needs we identified earlier. Ultimately, we aim to provide a thoughtful and open source of qualitative thinking and methods for social mapping and cartography.

Cheers!