Nevada Geographic Information Society Presentation. October 12, 2015
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•182 views
Nevada Geographic Information Society annual meeting presentation. Stateline, Nevada. October 12, 2015
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to Nevada Geographic Information Society Presentation. October 12, 2015
Similar to Nevada Geographic Information Society Presentation. October 12, 2015 (20)
More from epurpur
More from epurpur (6)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Nevada Geographic Information Society Presentation. October 12, 2015
- 1. GIS Education @UNR Erich Purpur GIS Librarian DeLaMare Science & Engineering Library University of Nevada, Reno epurpur@unr.edu
- 2. What I do -Serve the users of the DeLaMare Science & Engineering Library and the UNR Campus community -GIS is only part of my job -Care for the Makerspace -Supervise students -Liaison to various engineering departments -Day to day library stuff More Pics
- 3. My Own Experience -I am an end user -Land Use/Land Cover Management projects -@UNR -I don’t have my own GIS projects -helping inexperienced users
- 4. GIS Services I wanted to provide technical GIS support for users on campus -Daily: Walk-In availability in a public computer lab -with me or another dedicated tutor -an addition to existing tutoring services in the DeLaMare Library -Monthly: Intro to GIS sessions available to anyone
- 5. 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 Fall 2014 Spring 2015 Fall 2015 GIS Consultations by Semester GIS Use is on the rise @ UNR
- 6. John Snow – Original GIS Map
- 7. New Users New User Groups
- 8. Data Visualization Governor Sandoval enjoying our data visualization wall Augmented Reality Sandbox
- 9. Thank you Questions? Erich Purpur DeLaMare Science & Engineering Library 775 682 5706 epurpur@unr.edu
Editor's Notes
- I am going to at least talk about my efforts at UNR related to GIS education. Quite a few of the NGIS board members are passionate about this topic and there is discussion as to what the state of GIS education is in the state of Nevada. I am going to talk about the work I have done as far as working with people at UNR.
- My name is Erich Purpur and I work in the DeLaMare Science & Engineering Library at UNR. My title is GIS Librarian which is a little misleading because GIS is only part of what I do. At the highest level, my job is to serve the users of the DLM library and support their needs in whatever way I can. This includes standard librarian stuff like answering reference questions, solving printing issues, checking things in and out. The DLM library is progressive and is not your typical quiet library. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with the term “Makerspace” but the DLM library is UNR’s Makerspace and serves as the campus hub for innovation. Basically a Makerspace provides the tools and space necessary for people to gather and create things, both physically and intellectually. We provide collaborative learning spaces like group study areas, whiteboard walls. We do large format scanning and poster printing as well as 3D printing, which is our showpiece item and is available to the public. People print all kinds of things, from fun stuff like Iphone cases to elaborate prototypes of some kind of mechanical piece. I also supervise our student employees, which we could not do without, and serve as a liaison to various engineering departments on campus. This means I am their go-between person if they need stuff from the library. Since Gary Johnson retired I am the UNR campus ESRI representative. If people have licensing or software issues with ESRI products I am one of the contact people on campus. I work as part of the group which hosts the Keck site, UNR’s GIS data portal, and this has its own set of issues. I also do GIS research consultations with the general UNR population, which I will talk more about shortly.
- Basically, my GIS experience is basically as an end user. I have professional experience working with conservation organizations in North Carolina conducting land use/land cover assessments and watershed analysis in order to influence land management practices in biologically sensitive areas. Most of these areas are under some kind of conservation easement which regulates development and land management practices in this area. At UNR I think my role, as far as it related to GIS education, is to provide additional support to classroom and research activities, which is traditionally what the library’s role has always been. This includes providing point-of-need technical support, data and resource gathering, providing individual users with their own copies of the software, and provisioning any other resources which may be beneficial to geography and GIS related activities. A lot of the users I interact with are relatively inexperienced and I am helping people with their own projects. I am not actually responsible for my own projects and am not a researcher.
- I wanted to provide some level of technical ArcGIS support for people on campus and I started the best way I knew how. We now have daily hours in the building I work in for anyone to receive GIS support. The DLM library has offered tutoring services for a number of math, science, business related classes in the past and I saw this as a natural addition to those services. I met with the head of the tutoring center, Marsha Urban, and she agreed to fund some student tutor hours on a trial basis. I also volunteer my own hours as one of the tutors. I seek out students around campus with GIS skills to be tutors. Daily- We offer walk in help for anyone in a public computer lab in the DeLaMare Library. I have seen people from many departments around UNR but also from TMCC as well. Daily users have been anyone from Intro to GIS students getting help with their homework assignments to faculty members looking for data visualization help as a supplement to research projects. We also have the option to “book a consultation” online during these hours. People are referred to me for additional support or if the scheduled times don’t work for them. During the tutoring sessions I really try and not do things for people. This is a learning opportunity for them and I am not paid simply to do their homework or research. I try to force them to use the mouse and even if I guide them through the steps, I try and force them to think about what they are doing. Lab assignments in GIS classes from the Geography department are good for this because students have to answer questions along the way. Even if they follow me blindly through a few steps, I will not answer the questions for them. Again, this makes them look at the results and look back on the work they just did to draw conclusions. Another aspect I talk about is project management. If someone comes to me with something that is not from a GIS class, we go over things like where to gather data from, how we can manipulate data, how to import data from excel, how to export data into google earth, etc. Monthly- “Introduction to GIS” sessions. I have begun offering regularly scheduled sessions for anyone on campus that is interested. These sessions have been well attended, usually by grad students. These classes run between 75 and 90 minutes and feature a lecture component followed by a hands on exercise in ArcGIS. The exercise is generic but goes over a few commonly used tools. The downsides to these sessions is that they are not specific to each person’s needs, because they can’t be. Unfortunately people cannot learn to use ArcGIS in 1 session. However, the benefit is that people now know where to go for help in the future and I have followed up with quite a few people from these sessions.
- GIS services have seen increased use each semester. The services began in fall of 2014 and this semester’s projected numbers are 106 users. However, I expect that number to be higher since the end of the semester is always busier with people finishing labs, final projects, etc. -Numbers for both walk-in services and monthly “Intro to GIS” courses continue to rise by semester. Part of the challenge is marketing these services widely around campus. Some methods I have tried include: -making introductions at classes at the beginning of each semester -making introductions at department orientations each semester -distributing information about GIS services via the “grad student” listserv -posting flyers around campus I have kept a lot of statistics about the visits to try and demonstrate the value of this service to the tutoring center, who pays the student tutors, and to the library. I am running into the problem now of having too many visits, which is the ideal problem to have. My hope is that they tutoring center will fund more hours for students so I don’t have to be a tutor any more and can act more as backup support as well as working with more time consuming and involved projects. I think some of my marketing efforts have paid off here. I have advertised GIS services more widely and more people are coming for help, so we are doing something right. The right image shows the breakdown by users during the spring 2015 semester. Most people are related to the geography department but there are quite a few people who are from other social sciences, humanities, business, etc. I will talk more about this but I think the public health department is potentially an area with a lot of users. Data visualization can really benefit a lot of the epidemiological studies they are doing which focuses on the incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases relating to health.
- In fact, John Snow created the original GIS map, which focused on an study in epidemiology. In London, there was a cholera outbreak in the 1850s and this map helped identify bad water pumps as the source of the outbreak. You can see water pumps labeled, and then affected neighborhoods.
- A big challenge and part of what I like about my job is getting new users introduced to GIS. They find their way to me one way or another but I think the “Intro to GIS” classes I have been giving once a month are pretty successful. The users at those sessions are usually graduate students and tend to be from the social sciences or engineering departments. Some people I take under my wing as sort of apprentices and have become really good users in their own right. I think a lot of people in various departments think of GIS as a good thing to learn but don’t have formal coursework to support learning these new skills. Ex: Steve Messinger health data – Economics. Now working as a GIS professional -projected health cost analysis per household in based on data from local health clinics YiJyun – Political science – Studying conflict in Africa and Asia
- Another area we are exploring is data visualization. The DeLaMare Library has a few data visualization tools available currently as a part of our makerspace. For example: the Data visualization wall is our attempt at a cheap DIY data cave. Also, coming soon is the augmented reality sandbox. If you haven’t seen this, basically it is a live topographic map. You can manipulate the sandbox and see different shading and elevation variables in real time.