Meredith McKittrick developed an innovative assignment using StoryMaps for multiple courses centered on environmental inequality. In this assignment, students applied the ideas and concepts learned in class to their hometowns, creating rich, multimedia presentations that vividly illustrated environmental inequality.
Driven by her interest in digital humanities and her desire to create an engaging assignment relevant to students’ lives and local environments, Meredith McKittrick (History) designed “Visualizing Environmental Inequality” using ArcGIS StoryMaps for a cluster of courses focused on environmental inequity. This includes the Ignatius Seminar (IDST-1491-02, Fall 2023), an upper-level History seminar, and a co-taught course with Silvia Danielak, an Earth Commons postdoctoral fellow with expertise in GIS and urban planning.
The assignment tasked students with applying the ideas and concepts learned in class to their hometowns, producing rich, multimedia presentations that highlight environmental inequity in their own communities. In using mapping tools, images, graphics, and narrative, students were able to build arguments and stories around their local focus areas in ways that essay writing alone can’t replicate.
“[The multimedia elements] really added to the sort of depth of the research, and added to the kind of sophistication of the arguments they could make.”
While students were developing their multidimensional and multimodal arguments, McKittrick found that this pedagogical approach facilitated a reciprocal learning experience, where students and faculty learn from each other. While students practiced research and presentation skills, they were engaging deeply with course material in ways that were new to them—but also new to McKittrick, as each project is so unique to a particular region and, by extension, particular narrative layout.
Meredith noted, “The assignment ended with everybody presenting their projects to each other. And then we put them together into a group map, so to speak, so that it’s sort of one project that somebody could look at if they visited our course site. The students were, I could tell in the presentations, super proud of what they had done. That was great, because they had done really high quality work, and they felt good about it.”
Meredith also found that her own confidence increased as a result of collaborating with CNDLS and the library and reflected that “integrating digital technologies and digital forms of assignments into your class has an effect of sharpening students’ thinking.”
You can explore the digital story map and student projects on the Environmental Inequality, Environmental Justice website.
The Digital Research and Innovation (DRI) program is a partnership between CNDLS and Georgetown University Library.
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