{"id":521112,"date":"2022-06-28T19:59:38","date_gmt":"2022-06-29T02:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&p=521112"},"modified":"2022-06-28T11:29:46","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T18:29:46","slug":"connecting-online-is-connecting-geographers","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/connecting-online-is-connecting-geographers","title":{"rendered":"Connecting Online Is Connecting Geographers"},"author":5752,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[171,430081,282062],"tags":[11062,1631,301,209142,196042],"arcnews_issues":[479682],"class_list":["post-521112","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-meridian","category-geography","tag-aag","tag-collaboration","tag-community","tag-geographers","tag-gis-professionals","arcnews_issues-summer-2022","arcnews_sections-gis-people"],"acf":{"short_description":"Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, AAG has offered more than 100 varied events online. Here\u2019s what the organization has learned.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Last year, I called the COVID-19 pandemic \u201cthe crisis of our lifetime\u201d\u2014one that trained \u201ca merciless lens on the social and racial fissures that already made life difficult for so many people.\u201d (See \u201cPulling Together When a Pandemic Pulls Our Lives Apart<\/a>,\u201d from the winter 2021 issue of ArcNews<\/em>.) This is even truer today, as the pandemic\u2019s impact aggravates newer, equally urgent crises around the world. These stressful events reinforce how vital it is for people to connect, especially when we\u2019re not in the same room or even on the same continent.\r\n\r\nSince COVID-19 transformed our lives at home, at work, and in school, the American Association of Geographers (AAG) has engaged in a broad, online service and community-building experiment for geographers and geospatial scientists. We have offered more than 100 varied learning events online\u2014through our website\u2014to graduate students, young geographers, aspiring leaders, and colleagues in the discipline. I\u2019d like to share what we have learned while creating and scaling up these educational offerings for geographers around the globe."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":519362,"image_position":"left","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

The Big Shock of 2020<\/h2>\r\nIn March 2020, staff members at AAG were in the final weeks of preparing for the organization\u2019s annual meeting. Suddenly, we all went home. Housebound alone or with partners, roommates, children, and\/or pets, we embarked on a new kind of office life. Our members worked and taught on-screen\u2014often without adequate child- or other family care\u2014while experiencing illness among ourselves and loved ones. Soon, many were burned out. This crisis was particularly acute for the medical geographers and GIS specialists who were producing a record number of COVID-19 dashboards, as well as for professors and instructors.\r\n\r\nCOVID-19 created especially challenging circumstances for students and people just starting out in their careers. In a policy brief released in July 2021, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted impacts from rising youth unemployment rates in virtually all OECD countries, including increased depression and anxiety (rates were 30\u201380 percent higher among young people than the general population in three OECD countries, including the United States). Additionally, the OECD reported declines in access to education and increased housing insecurity for young people worldwide.\r\n\r\nAt AAG, we were also worried about geography students being cut off from campus resources, facing technological barriers at home, and not being able to complete their research projects. This shock reverberated across the sciences. A study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago found that 67 percent of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research at 208 of the leading graduate science programs had to be put on hold or discontinued due to the pandemic.\r\n\r\nThese stressors fell disproportionately on women; people experiencing poverty; and members of Black, Indigenous, (and) People of Color (BIPOC) communities. According to \u201cGeographies of the COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d a paper published in mid-2020 in Dialogues in Human Geography<\/em>, \u201cThere is an emerging consensus that low-income communities, the working class, women, people of color, and Indigenous people are being more significantly impacted by the pandemic in relation to health, working arrangements, and social and economic hardship.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn the summer of 2020, AAG convened an all-volunteer COVID-19 Rapid Response Task Force to develop diverse remedies to support our international community of thousands of geographers and spatial scientists\u2014many of whom are graduate students and early career geographers. These remedies often focused on issues in the discipline that were present before the pandemic, including the need for racial equity, training and networking opportunities for geography department leaders, and career help. AAG and Esri partnered on one such program, Bridging the Digital Divide, to meet the equipment and technical needs of undergraduate geography students at minority-serving institutions (MSIs). Since the program\u2019s inception, AAG has distributed more than $580,000 in funds\u2014including member contributions and $50,000 from Esri\u2014to 23 MSIs in the United States.\r\n\r\nAAG also created dozens of online webinars in 2020 and 2021 to help members hone their research skills, support academic department leaders, train students in new quantitative and qualitative research methods, explore critical issues related to geography practice and geodata, and provide educational and mentoring support. These webinars\u2014which have attracted approximately 6,000 attendees so far and are continuing throughout 2022\u2014appeal to geographers at every stage of their careers."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

While Facilitating Online Learning, We Learned Too<\/h2>\r\nDid I mention that all this intense activity was carried out as AAG shifted its annual meeting from in-person to virtual, three years in a row? While AAG staff members moved thousands of sessions, keynote presentations, and networking and mentoring events online\u2014each time in a matter of weeks\u2014we were thinking through the profound changes coming to our field via the increase in online-based professional development. Here are just a few lessons we\u2019ve learned.\r\n

Face-to-Face Connection Is Beneficial\u2014Even On-Screen<\/h3>\r\nDuring AAG\u2019s webinar series to introduce graduate students to various research methods and helpful applications, facilitators knew that it was equally important to engender peer-to-peer connection and offer mentoring opportunities. To create this sort of supportive atmosphere, the series included writing workshops and discussions focused on confronting mental health needs in the academy. Moderators were creative in their icebreaker exercises and use of networking tools, activating everything from informal polls and in-the-moment mapping to carefully managed virtual breakout rooms that encouraged small-group and one-on-one conversation."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":519372,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

Taking the Whole Person into Consideration Is Vital<\/h3>\r\nAn all-remote learning program reinforces the importance of being aware that each participant is a whole person. When planning AAG webinars, we now ask ourselves questions such as the following:\r\n