Abstract


Mapping Development Patterns in an Introduction to Economics Course
Track: Teaching with GIS in Higher Education
Author(s): Rafat Fazeli, Carol Franklin, Timothy Leach

This project used GIS in the Intro to Economics classes. The

course was designed to integrate GIS weekly labs parallel to

class teaching. Students used the United Nation data sets

(looking at Human Development Index), US Bureau of Statistics,

World Development Indicators from the World Development

Report, and GIS in their weekly assignments and term research

project. The advantage of using GIS data set is that it provided

them with an interactive spatial database. GIS made it possible

for the students to visualize the country's database values on

fertility rate, population, per capital GDP, life expectancy by

analyzing various layers of data on the country under study. It

let students increase their knowledge about the comparison of

different countries economic position in the global level. Using

Mapping Our World lessons, students were able to develop their

own projects with data available online.

Rafat Fazeli
University of Redlands
Economics
1200 E. Colton Ave
Redlands , CA 92373
US
Phone: 909-748-8564
E-mail: rafat_fazeli@redlands.edu

Carol Franklin
University of Redlands
School of Education
1200 E. Colton Ave
Redlands , CA 92373
US
Phone: 909-748-8794
E-mail: carol_franklin@redlands.edu

Timothy Leach
University of Redlands
MS in GIS
1200 E. Colton Ave
Redlands , CA 92373
US
Phone: 909-793-2121
E-mail: timothy_leach@redlands.edu