GIS applications in emergency management: Infusing geographic literacy in the classroom

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Siebeneck, PhD ◽  
Ronald L. Schumann III, PhD ◽  
Britt-Janet Kuenanz, PhD Student
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Geospatial Technologies ◽  
Skill Sets ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
Gis Applications ◽  
Emergency Managers ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Geographic Literacy

Objective: The purpose of this article is to promote growth and recognition of geographic literacy among students, faculty, and emergency management practitioners through presentation of an array of possibilities that will further best practices in emergency management higher education.Design: Guided by previous research examining the development of geographic literacy in undergraduate students, this article provides examples of traditional and newer technologies in geographic information systems (GIS) and geospatial analysis that can be incorporated into the classroom to enhance the knowledge and skill sets of future emergency managers.Setting: The setting for this article includes colleges and universities offering emergency management degree programs.Results: The information resulting from a review of the literature provides a description of traditional and newer technologies used to address spatial issues in the management of hazards and disasters as well as practical suggestions for incorporating these technologies into classroom activities.Conclusions: Geographic literacy is an essential competency for the next generation of emergency managers and as such, classroom activities should provide students hands-on experience working with GIS and other geospatial technologies.

scholarly journals Integrating Drone Technology with GPS Data Collection to Enhance Forestry Students Interactive Hands-On Field Experiences

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Unger ◽  
I-Kuai Hung ◽  
Yanli Zhang ◽  
David Kulhavy
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
State University ◽  
Geospatial Technologies ◽  
Field Methods ◽  
Field Station ◽  
Bachelor Of Science ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Point To Point ◽  
Point Line ◽  
Cognitive Retention

Undergraduate students pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Forestry (BSF) at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFA) within the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture (ATCOFA) attend an intensive 6-week hands-on instruction in applied field methods. The second week of field station is focused on land measurement activities to introduce students to practical, hands-on, and technology based ways to survey forest boundaries. On Monday of the second week students are introduced to the concepts of how to use a handheld compass to navigate from point to point, use a consumer-grade handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) unit for collecting the geographic coordinates of given locations, use a GPS unit to calculate the area of a forest opening, use a GPS unit to walk and record a forest hiking trail, and evaluate the accuracy of their GPS derived locations via a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) analysis. RMSE analysis between a students collected geographic coordinates and the instructors collected geographic coordinates indicated that the students were sufficient in correctly recording the geographic coordinates of point, line, and polygon features identified in the field. Grades on the student submitted reports summarizing Monday’s activities resulted in 33 of 56 students (59.0%) receiving a high A, 14 of 56 students (25.0%) receiving a low A, and 9 of 56 students (16.0%) receiving a high B indicating that the interactive hands-on nature of ATCOFA’s field station is effective at providing students with real-world applications whereby they will be ready to make a difference the day after graduation. Interactive drone imagery and video integrated into the daily activities in the field to enhance a student’s understanding of their specific objectives provided the students in the field with a bird’s eye perspective of the landscape to aid their understanding and planning of the field tasks assigned. In conclusion, employers can have confidence that when hiring recent BSF graduates from ATCOFA that the students have been introduced to geospatial technologies within a proven one-on-one instruction methodology designed to increase cognitive retention and can traverse from location to location accurately and record the geographic coordinates of earth surface features correctly.

scholarly journals Health emergency management in Aotearoa New Zealand: Making sense of professional development

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 359-369
Author(s):  
Denise Blake, PhD ◽  
Patricia Niland, PhD ◽  
David M. Johnston, PhD
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Skill Sets ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Emergency Managers ◽  
Complex Emergency ◽  
Data Driven Approach ◽  
And Training

Objective: To explore how health emergency management (HEM) personnel make sense of professional development, such as education and training, in their everyday roles and responsibilities within an increasingly complex emergency management and disaster field.Design: This in-depth qualitative study comprised of semistructured interviews with 10 Aotearoa New Zealand HEM personnel from a range of healthcare professions, including emergency managers, nurses, clinical support, and paramedics. The thematic, data-driven approach was exploratory. The research identified inductively significant thematic concepts relating to professional development from the health emergency personnel’s talk about their roles and responsibilities.Results: The authors identified four themes relating to professional development in the participants’ talk: test yourself under pressure; selling what we do; under the pump; and real stuff that actually makes a difference. These themes represent shared sense-making about how the participants negotiated their professional development needs and the needs of others while performing their everyday roles and responsibilities. Conclusions: Our findings support the production of local and contextually driven knowledge that highlights how HEM personnel discuss professional development as strengths, tensions, challenges, and knowledge gaps. These insights contribute to a broader understanding of what needs to be taken into account when developing competencies, skill sets, and training programs to promote professional development in an increasingly complex emergency management and disaster field.

Social media best practices in emergency management

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Siskey, MS ◽  
Tanveer Islam, PhD, CFM
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Nationwide Survey ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Emergency Managers ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Social media platforms have become popular as means of communications in emergency management. Many people use social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis including during disaster events. Emergency management agencies (EMAs) need to recognize the value of not only having a presence on social media but also actively engaging stakeholders and the public on these sites. However, identifying best practices for the use of social media in emergency management is still in its infancy. The objective of this article is to begin to create or further define best practices for emergency managers to use social media sites particularly Facebook and Twitter in four key areas: 1) implementation, 2) education, 3) collaboration, and 4) communication. A list of recommendations of best practices is formulated for each key area and results from a nationwide survey on the use of social media bycounty EMAs are discussed in this article.

scholarly journals Health emergency management in Aotearoa New Zealand: Making sense of professional development

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Blake ◽  
Patricia Niland ◽  
David M Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Skill Sets ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Emergency Managers ◽  
Complex Emergency ◽  
Data Driven Approach ◽  
And Training

Objective: To explore how health emergency management (HEM) personnel make sense of professional development, such as education and training, in their everyday roles and responsibilities within an increasingly complex emergency management and disaster field.Design: This in-depth qualitative study comprised of semistructured interviews with 10 Aotearoa New Zealand HEM personnel from a range of healthcare professions, including emergency managers, nurses, clinical support, and paramedics. The thematic, data-driven approach was exploratory. The research identified inductively significant thematic concepts relating to professional development from the health emergency personnel’s talk about their roles and responsibilities.Results: The authors identified four themes relating to professional development in the participants’ talk: test yourself under pressure; selling what we do; under the pump; and real stuff that actually makes a difference. These themes represent shared sense-making about how the participants negotiated their professional development needs and the needs of others while performing their everyday roles and responsibilities. Conclusions: Our findings support the production of local and contextually driven knowledge that highlights how HEM personnel discuss professional development as strengths, tensions, challenges, and knowledge gaps. These insights contribute to a broader understanding of what needs to be taken into account when developing competencies, skill sets, and training programs to promote professional development in an increasingly complex emergency management and disaster field.

scholarly journals Health emergency management in Aotearoa New Zealand: Making sense of professional development

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Blake ◽  
Patricia Niland ◽  
David M Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Skill Sets ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Emergency Managers ◽  
Complex Emergency ◽  
Data Driven Approach ◽  
And Training

Objective: To explore how health emergency management (HEM) personnel make sense of professional development, such as education and training, in their everyday roles and responsibilities within an increasingly complex emergency management and disaster field.Design: This in-depth qualitative study comprised of semistructured interviews with 10 Aotearoa New Zealand HEM personnel from a range of healthcare professions, including emergency managers, nurses, clinical support, and paramedics. The thematic, data-driven approach was exploratory. The research identified inductively significant thematic concepts relating to professional development from the health emergency personnel’s talk about their roles and responsibilities.Results: The authors identified four themes relating to professional development in the participants’ talk: test yourself under pressure; selling what we do; under the pump; and real stuff that actually makes a difference. These themes represent shared sense-making about how the participants negotiated their professional development needs and the needs of others while performing their everyday roles and responsibilities. Conclusions: Our findings support the production of local and contextually driven knowledge that highlights how HEM personnel discuss professional development as strengths, tensions, challenges, and knowledge gaps. These insights contribute to a broader understanding of what needs to be taken into account when developing competencies, skill sets, and training programs to promote professional development in an increasingly complex emergency management and disaster field.

scholarly journals An Experiential Learning Approach to Fostering Learner Autonomy among Omani Students

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Teresa Boggu ◽  
J. Sundarsingh
Keyword(s):  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Learner Autonomy ◽  
Learning By Doing ◽  
Learning Cycle ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Potential Benefits

Experiential learning is a learner-facilitating tool that has not been sufficiently explored in Higher education institutions in Oman. There is a growing body of literature that recognises the importance of ‘learning by doing,’ ‘hands-on approach’ or ‘experiential learning.’ Experiential learning grew in popularity with adult learners since the time of Dewey and progressed with several scholars researching on the potential benefits of applying experiential learning methods in vocational and technical training institutions. The notion that knowledge is gained through active involvement in a specific task is a construct that has been researched in the present study. It endeavours to foster learner autonomy through the implementation of instructional tasks based on Kolb’s experiential learning cycle. The main objective was to observe the change in perceptions of learners on their autonomous behaviour before and after the intervention. Through convenience sampling of 60 undergraduate students, enrolled for various pathways on the business programme were selected for this study. The quantitative data was collected by administering a learner autonomy questionnaire and a set of self-designed experiential learning classroom activities. The findings of the study revealed that experiential learning cycle activities implicitly fostered learner autonomy and enabled learning necessary skills for the workplace.

Needs Analysis and Teachers' Perceptions: A Study of the English Undergraduate Students

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
Needs Analysis ◽  
Learning Needs ◽  
English Learning ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
Teaching Aids

Needs Analysis in the context of language-learning-teaching is an important process to design a certain course and syllabus. It helps course designers to set objectives, choose content, method of instruction, appropriate teaching aids, and classroom activities for different courses. This paper reports the perceptions of the researchers on the English language learning needs of the English undergraduate students of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University Sheringal, Pakistan. The data is based on the researchers’ personal experience and first-hand observation of the population as the researchers have been teaching in the target context for about a decade. Furthermore, the researchers have always been in discussion with their students and colleagues about the target students’ English learning needs, preferred learning styles, motivation in learning English, interest, strengths/weaknesses, and attitude toward English learning in the target setting. Learners’ assignments, exam answer sheets, and presentations have also been used is a source of data collection. A needs analysis model proposed by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) has been applied in order to analyze the data. The results show that the students lack well grammatical sentences, have poor spellings, capitalization problems, limited vocabulary, unaware of collocations, poor/slow reading comprehension, and lack of effective presentation skills. Furthermore, most of the students have a lack of involvement in classroom activities and feel shy about speaking the English language. It was reported that the provision of authentic material, interesting activities, suitable audio-visual aids, relevant texts, language labs, and other logistic arrangements can better help them in learning the English language. The findings demonstrate that the students wished to have a learner-centered-course that helps them excel in their academic life and learning the English language.

Integrating Disciplines in a Plant Chemistry Laboratory Module to Enhance Interdisciplinary and Scientific Thinking in Undergraduate Students

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Busta ◽  
Sabrina E. Russo
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Medicinal Plant ◽  
Systems Thinking ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Core Competencies ◽  
Chemistry Laboratory ◽  
Scientific Thinking ◽  
Written Communication ◽  
Plant Chemistry ◽  
Hands On

Here, we describe a hands-on medicinal plant chemistry laboratory module (Phytochemical Laboratory Activities for iNtegrative Thinking and Enhanced Competencies; PLANTEC) for undergraduates that targets the development of core competencies in (i) critical thinking and analysis of text and data, (ii) interdisciplinary and systems thinking, (iii) oral and written communication of science, and (iv) teamwork and collaboration.<br>

Formulating Industry-Academic Collaborations That Work: Best Practices to Ensure a Strong Relationship After the Agreements are Signed

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-177
Author(s):  
Michael B. Dilling ◽  
Anne C. DiSante ◽  
Ross Durland ◽  
Christine E. Flynn ◽  
Leonid Metelitsa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Product Development ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
Collaborative Relationships ◽  
Skill Sets ◽  
Pragmatic Aspects

Collaborations between academia and industry are growing in scope, duration, and sophistication. The best collaborations recognize the unique strengths and skill sets of both parties and are structured to leverage what each party does best. In many cases, these collaborations develop into long-term relationships, and it is important to develop the systems and structures needed to support these relationships to ensure that they meet the needs of both sides. Successful collaborations require the formulation of a governance structure to facilitate communication, decision-making, assessment of progress, and the inevitable changes of direction that accompany product development. This panel explored the pragmatic aspects of successfully structuring collaborations and managing the relationships after the deal is done. Several dominant themes associated with successful collaborative relationships emerged from the discussion, and these will be explored in this article.

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