Educational Opportunities of Participatory GIS for Accessibility on a College Campus

Authors

Shiya Cao, Smith CollegeFollow
Heather Rosenfeld, Smith CollegeFollow
Sarah Susnea, Smith College

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-17-2025

Publication Title

Journal of Geography in Higher Education

Abstract

The educational benefits of Participatory GIS (PGIS) in geographic higher education have received limited direct attention, often because of the complexities of integrating PGIS into university curricula. While a few exceptions found important educational benefits of PGIS, extant studies focused primarily on the educational benefits for students who worked in the research teams, instead of participants who contributed their local knowledge and perspectives to mapping. Our research aims to understand the educational benefits of PGIS for participants in a campus accessibility mapping project using the modes of experiential learning, positionality, and service learning. Through this, we also provide strategies for effectively integrating PGIS projects into undergraduate geographical curricular education. Through independent participation in two spatial surveys (a mapping survey and a questionnaire on campus accessibility) via Survey123, group participation in a guided workshop, and the follow-up focus groups/interviews, we identify the educational benefits of PGIS for participants: (1) building knowledge/skills about accessible technological features of PGIS; (2) building content knowledge about accessibility; (3) transforming pre-constructed knowledge by learning from one another; (4) building awareness of positionality as disabled and non-disabled individuals; (5) building awareness of positionality as a community; and (6) enabling localized and place-based insights and empowerment.

Recommended Citation

Cao, Shiya; Rosenfeld, Heather; and Susnea, Sarah, "Educational Opportunities of Participatory GIS for Accessibility on a College Campus" (2025). Statistical and Data Sciences: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/sds_facpubs/86

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1080/03098265.2025.2549304

Rights

Licensed to Smith College and distributed CC-BY 4.0 under the Smith College Faculty Open Access Policy.

Version

Author's Accepted Manuscript

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.