Activities for Week 1

1. Identify the Connections Between Spatial Concepts

Purpose: To practice classifying spatial concepts and recognizing the relationships between concepts.

Task: In small groups, identify the level of each concept in the following list. Then, for each concept above the primitive level, identify which lower-level concepts it is built from.

location, magnitude, distance, direction, boundary, region, pattern, distribution, network, hierarchy, spatial autocorrelation, scale, density, diffusion, proximity

2. Draw a Map of Campus

Purpose: To illustrate how basic spatial concepts have also been identified in other domains, and in a more general understanding of the environment.

Task: Draw a map of campus. After drawing your map, work to identify its elements and link those to spatial concepts.

3. Audit Your Research Question with Spatial Thinking

Purpose: To identify and articulate the spatial concepts and reasoning strategies used in your work and explain how they connect to spatial thinking frameworks.

Task: Reflect on the research question and analysis you identified at the beginning of this class session. Attempt to answer the questions below.

1. What spatial concepts were/are you working with when answering that question? Classify each as primitive, simple, or complex.

2. What representations did/will you use? Why those and not others?

3. What level of reasoning did the task require (input, processing, output)?

4. What spatial assumptions did you make that you did not question at the time?

5. Where would you place your research question on the taxonomy of Jo and Bednarz (2009)?