As I prepare for my semester I have been reflecting on a meeting with a student of mine some time ago, where I discussed the importance of not letting the tool guide the question. I relayed this advice much the way my own mentor, Maggi Kelly pushed me to not force a GIS question. How absurd is this, that I, a GIS instructor, would not seek to have a question that is answerable by GIS? Isn’t that the point of learning a technique? I want to approach this question with more nuance. For starters, I think this advice is still appropriate, but I want to apply some limits to this advice. 

As the instructor of a GIS class, I want my students to learn how to use geographic information software. I want them to understand the basic functionality of this tool, when and how to apply it, where to find resources to put into it, and how to interpret the results. However, I want my students to understand that GIS is not the answer to all questions–nor should it be. 

This idea is difficult to get across in a meaningful way. I don’t wish to dissuade my students from pursuing and using tools like GIS, however, I want my students to think critically about their questions and to allow the GIS components to emerge from the question, not the other way around. With that said, there are time constraints the students in my introductory GIS class face that I did not face as a PhD student. While the advice to explore the question may be appropriate in the context of my doctoral studies, the context of the undergraduate introductory course requires additional nuance. 

Students of an introductory course can be expected to identify a problem that can be addressed with GIS. I believe it is fair and reasonable to set parameters so that the questions can be addressed within the given time frame of the semester. If we place time constraints on our questions, we can also place tool constraints. The challenge is to convey to our students that the special situation of the classroom and the self-guided learning project is not the only space that they can hope to address the problems that most interest them. 

In the classroom context we can expect that students will address a fictitious or real world problem of the instructor’s making, designed or chosen by the instructor. Additionally, a student might be presented with a short list of projects to choose from, again within the bounds of knowledge of the instructor. 

Students may benefit most when the instructor has knowledge about a topic or the application of a technique in a narrow sense that will allow for providing meaningful feedback to the student.

Open-ended questions are much more challenging. Similarly, giving students the ability to select their own projects and to develop their own questions that the instructor must respond to, adding a layer of complexity that can stretch the resources of the instructor. 

These added dimensions often go unacknowledged with students and when they are absent, may hinder students’ learning. Thus the instructor must thoughtfully respond to guide the learning of the student. 

If say the student chooses their own project, the instructor may have to grade the appropriateness  and the completeness of the question construction; the appropriateness of data used to answer that question; the relevant geography theories that guide the analysis of those questions; cartographic and design principles in terms of how the data are displayed; as well as the grammar, spelling, and logic. How does one standardize the feedback that is provided to students with such a wide array of possibilities for students to respond? This creates a challenge for the instructor regardless of the extensiveness of their expertise. 

I know how to apply GIS to my research focus and employ it to answer questions more broadly as they relate to questions of disparity and inequality. I have less knowledge and no prior experience using GIS to develop a model for species dispersion or measuring habitat suitability for such species. I am similarly lacking in my knowledge of applying GIS to address questions of business development, or of deploying web-based mapping tools. Does this leave me unfit to teach a GIS class? Perhaps some would think so. I argue, however, that I bring in a critical understanding of the tools of GIS. That I teach my students to think about space critically and to understand how data can be collected and utilized from government sources, and from community gathered sources to address questions of environmental and health inequality. 

The intent of my approach to teaching GIS is to give my students tools to use GIS; to learn on their own; to have the confidence to use these tools;  to be cautious of how far and wide the results of GIS are deployed. All of this with the understanding that the systems of oppression that we are operating within can have unintended consequences, or rather fully intentional oppressive consequences. Those consequences may not have been our intention, but the systems of oppression operate to make the consequences fully intentional. 

In closing this musing for the day, I want to think more deeply on the matter of how to educate students using GIS, without prescribing that GIS is the tool to answer all questions. How do we think spatially, and “platially”. How can we critically engage with a tool and use it to chip away at the imbalance of power? While Audre Lorde (Lorde, 2003) argued that we cannot use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house, can we not use the master’s’ tools to at least critically unpack the blueprints of the masters house?

Lorde, A. (2003) ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’, Feminist postcolonial theory: A reader, 25, p. 27.