Crisis Mapping: Teaching High School ELL Students How to Make Maps That Save Lives

Room: Tsavo Hall

Sunday, 14:30
Duration: 10 minutes (plus Q&A)

This event will not be recorded.

• Dr. Joel Thomas

This paper presents the learning outcomes of a Mini-Mapathon course developed, implemented, and evaluated for the first time in a population of 28 Asian Junior high school ELL students in three Human Geography courses at an international high school. The paper includes an introduction to crisis mapping and concludes with an analysis of students’ knowledge and skill gains, and attitudes towards map making. Students’ survey responses were analyzed using mixed methods. In conclusion, the paper proposes that the Mini-Mapathon course could be implemented in other schools with a larger sample size to investigate learning outcomes.

. I designed and developed the Mini-Mapathon curriculum to answer three key research questions below.

1. How did the design support changes in students’ perceptions of their crisis mapping knowledge and skills?
2. How did participating in the Mini-Mapathon support student expressed interest in crisis mapping in the future?
3. How did the Mini-Mapathon support students in engaging crisis mapping?

I designed and delivered the Mini-Mapathon, via three 45-minute Human Geography courses to 28 junior Asian high school students at an international school in Beijing, China. The English Language Learners (ELL) student population were all Chinese and their ages ranged from 16-18, consisting of 15 male students and 13 female students. Prior to implementing the research project with 28 Human Geography students, I researched the best way to teach crisis mapping to ELL students by participating in Mapathons and Mapalongs. I piloted three crisis mapping Mini-Mapathons for 55 Asian 4th grade students in three classrooms after learning crisis mapping was done effectively with 10 year old students in Milan, Italy (Gaspari, et al., 2021). The pilot programs with 4th grade Asian students and subsequent project were implemented only after the 4th grade students learned about crises in their IB-PYP curriculum, and after I conducted an extensive literature review of this relatively new (2005), interdisciplinary and innovative field of crisis mapping, investigated many mapping software platforms, and spoke to representatives from www.ushahidi.org, www.hotosm.org , and www.missingmaps.com.
A website was built (www.crisismapping.weebly.com) to turn the Mini-Mapathon experience into an exportable educational activity that could be replicated or delivered in formal and informal learning environments. Using the ADDIE approach, I sought to design, implement, and evaluate a Mini-Mapathon curriculum to answer my three research questions. I implemented my applied research project on teaching crisis mapping through a Mini-Mapathon and collected pre and post surveys in late April, 2022, during the spring semester at an international high school in my three Human Geography classes. Twenty-eight Asian students participated in the Mini-Mapathon so that medicine and services could be delivered to vulnerable populations in Nigeria and Zimbabwe by Doctors Without Borders and The Red Cross. During the 45 minute Mini-Mapathons, students were taught how to map buildings and roads using Humanitarian Open Street Mapping software via www.hotosm.org and they took pre and post surveys so that I could better understand and measure how students learn during Mapathons and determine if my methodology for teaching crisis mapping was effective (Branch, 2009). The learning objectives of the Mini-Mapathon design were as follows: 1) Students will be able to co-create interactive open street maps using geo-spatial software. 2) Students will be able to analyze the role maps play in crisis response such as refugee crises and disasters and identify the stakeholders including citizens, international humanitarian organizations such as UNHCR, Doctors Without Borders, and Red Cross, NGO’s, government agencies, and military branches. 3) Students will be able to develop geographical knowledge and spatial awareness. I delivered pre and post surveys to better understand how students learn, what they learn, and assess the quality of crisis mapping instruction in my three Human Geography courses with 28 Asian high school students. How to Create an Account tutorial along with the other static and video tutorials can now be found on the website I built www.crisismapping.weebly.com. I began each class with a 2–3-minute video focusing on the problem, population in need and showcasing the work of the Spanish Red Cross, UNHCR, or Doctors Without Borders, to increase cultural and historical context and show the organization who can operationalize our map to provide relief to those in need. I then proceeded to explain that some places do not have accurate maps because they do not have Google cars driving around or adequate resources in the government to make up to date maps, however, volunteers like us can make the new maps together using satellite imagery. I asked the students to create their own OSM accounts in previous classes because we had been using the OpenStreetMap resource to explore chokepoints, or straights and canals, to better understand geography and global trade in previous lessons. I provided anonymous usernames and passwords if students had not yet created their OSM accounts to save time. Some opted to use the Tutorial How to Create An OSM Account and some students taught others how to create an account quickly.

Next, I proceeded to implement the following step by step in class instructions in order to make learning visible and meet the academic language needs of the ELL students (Hattie, 2008; Yoder, et al., 2016).
Step 1) Watch a fellow student map in front of the classroom following the teacher instruction through a four-step tutorial How To Map A Building. The tutorial can be found on www.crisismapping.weebly.com Step 2) Review the four-step process by coaching the student verbally through the four-step tutorial How to Map a Building. Step 3) Correct the teacher’s mistakes of not following the order and incorrectly mapping the building size, and mapping a shadow. Step 4) Answer any questions students may have. Step 5) Ask students to start mapping their first building and raise their hands before saving and uploading their work so the teacher or aid can inspect and correct their work if needed.

PDF and video tutorials on How to Map a Building and How to Map a Road were delivered through the school’s information communication technology platform so students could learn at their own pace through multi-modal scaffolded instruction. The population sample of 28 Asian ELL high school junior students completed pre-surveys prior to the learning intervention or Mapathon and then completed the post survey. The pre and post survey questions were a mix of qualitative and quantitative questions (see Table 3). The quantitative survey data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel. The descriptive analysis was performed with SPSS to find the frequencies, percentages, the mean and standard deviation of survey question data. The descriptive statistics are presented below in the form of tables, graphs, and charts below. I used descriptive statistics and analysis instead of inferential statistics because this was a pilot project with a small sample size. The goal was to understand the impact of the new curriculum on this particular population and not to generalize effects of an intervention for all similar students.