ENVS 100b, GIS Methods and Skills, Spring 2020
One of the primary goals of this class is to prepare you with the methods and skills in Geographical Information Systems that allow you to analyze real-world problems related to space, location, and geography. The final project is aimed at just that: you will be developing your own research questions, navigating through the methodological/technical aspects to answer your question, and presenting that to a non-expert, curious audience.
You can choose any topic at your discretion, as long as your study is related to GIS. You are strongly encouraged to link your project with the disciplinary knowledge that you have already learned at Brandeis, no matter it is biology, history, linguistics or economics. GIS is useful in every one of these subjects, and it will be most beneficial for your future academic/career pursuits to find creative linkages between GIS and the discipline of your interest.
In general, you are expected to work on the group project in a group of 2 students. Advanced undergraduate students and graduate students can choose to work on their own projects upon discussion with the instructor. All team members will receive the same score.
Your final project will be a poster (electronic), plus an oral presentation of about 15 minutes. The final product is expected to be original, i.e., not a simple symbolization of some existing data set. Depending on the nature of your project, the technical difficulty of your project may vary. But at a minimum, you are expected to make a reasonable effort in GIS in pursuit of your question.
The project accounts for 30% of your final grade. The grade for this project will be based on a total of 100 points.
A detailed rubric is as follows:
Additionally, you are encouraged to submit your poster to external conferences. If your poster is selected, all author(s) will be rewarded by a one full letter grade increase. That is, you will earn an (almost automatic) A+ if your original grade is or above B+.
Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis is inviting poster submissions for their conference, with a deadline very close to our due date (4/20). Other conferences will count as well upon approval from the instructor.
Here is the submission guideline for the Harvard CGA conference:
This event is free and open to the public. Registered participants are welcome to submit a poster to be included in the poster exhibit.
Please send PDF file to jblossom @ cga.harvard.edu for review before April 20th. If accepted, please bring 42'' x 36'' poster on May 1st.
To have this course counted as a lower-level ECON elective, you are required to complete your project in relation to the discipline of economics. Please consult with the instructor beforehand to see if your project qualifies.
Making a poster is just like writing a paper, only with more pictures and fewer words. Similar to an academic paper, your overall goal is to try to sell the main point(s) of your study to your audience. That means that your poster should follow the traditional recipe of a good academic paper, or, as a matter of fact, principles of story-telling. Usually, that would be consist of, in the order of presentation, the following:
Unlike a paper, you have the opportunity to present your story with pictures: lots of them. A nice visualization worths more than 5 pages of words.
Here are a series of resources on what and how to make a good poster:
MIT poster guiding principles
Example from Brandeis Computer Science
A Collection of Powerpoint Templates