AbstractHealth Care Experts/GIS Novices: Nurses Study Epidemiology Using GIS Track: Teaching with GIS in Higher Education Author(s): Adam Tarnoff Nurses are health care professionals, not data technicians. However, lack of technical expertise is not preventing graduate students at Loyola University Chicago’s Niehoff School of Nursing from using GIS to conduct first-rate epidemiology research. Although GIS is an integral part of modern epidemiology methodology, most nursing faculties avoid using GIS in their classrooms. In the past, the technical expertise required to use GIS excluded it from classrooms where faculty must emphasize managing threats to public health, not learning the ins and outs of complicated software. Today, new technologies originally developed for K–12 audiences have transformed the way GIS can be used in classroom settings. This paper will describe how Loyola nursing faculty, in partnership with the Provost’s Office of Learning Technologies and Assessment, have sufficiently lowered the barriers to entry so that graduate nursing students are now able to generate and analyze their own epidemiology datasets and conduct professional public health research. Adam Tarnoff Loyola University Chicago Office of the Provost 6525 North Sheridan Road Suite 400 Chicago, IL 60626 US Phone: 773-508-7476 E-mail: atarno1@luc.edu |