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!