Course description
This course, offered every spring, focuses on how community engaged research methods can be paired with GIScience methods and theories, providing real world relevance to course materials and supporting the work of local community groups. Students learn about a range of theoretical frameworks for community engaged research, including community geography, public participatory GIS (PPGIS), open science/open data, citizen science and VGI, and countermapping. Through labs and a group project, students also partner with one or multiple local organizations to produce new research products that can inform future policy and action. Here are links to the most recent syllabus and schedule.
Course projects
Spring 2020
This class worked with data about the historically African-American Linnentown neighborhood in Athens. More information is available on this page.
Spring 2019
The community partners for this class included the following:
Spring 2018
Students this semester worked with multiple local non-profits and government bodies: Enlightened Media Productions, Athens Land Trust, the Athens-Clarke County GIS office, Clarke County Board of Elections, the Clarke County School District, and the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI).
Spring 2017
Students this semester worked with local school governance teams at Athens Clarke County. They created online tools and written white papers that addressed concerns these teams had about their local community.
Spring 2016
Students this semester compiled existing secondary data on Athens-Clarke county as preliminary work for the Athens Wellbeing Project. Their summary report is available through this link, and a dashboard with their data (built with Shiny) is available here.
This class worked with data about the historically African-American Linnentown neighborhood in Athens. More information is available on this page.
Spring 2019
The community partners for this class included the following:
- Students created an online map of social services for the local non-profit The Sparrow's Nest
- Students updated a list of African-American owned businesses in the Athens area for Enlightened Media Productions and created a storymap including video introductions from business owners
- Working with the Reese Hancock Research Collaborative, students conducted an initial analysis of home sales data over the last ten years to examine the impact of the Great Recession and ongoing gentrification
- In partnership with Athens-Clarke County Leisure Services, students evaluated accessibility of greenways throughout the county by neighborhoods' demographic composition
- Students mapped access to emergency services in Oglethorpe County, which has numerous, overlapping volunteer fire departments.
Spring 2018
Students this semester worked with multiple local non-profits and government bodies: Enlightened Media Productions, Athens Land Trust, the Athens-Clarke County GIS office, Clarke County Board of Elections, the Clarke County School District, and the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI).
- Student map of black-owned businesses in Athens is featured on the Enlightened Media Productions website
- Storymap of changing home prices in the West Broad neighborhood--research done with Athens Land Trust
- Storymap of county owned land suitable for community garden spaces--research done with ACC GIS office
- Tableau dashboard of data from JDAI
Spring 2017
Students this semester worked with local school governance teams at Athens Clarke County. They created online tools and written white papers that addressed concerns these teams had about their local community.
Spring 2016
Students this semester compiled existing secondary data on Athens-Clarke county as preliminary work for the Athens Wellbeing Project. Their summary report is available through this link, and a dashboard with their data (built with Shiny) is available here.