CoLab: Digital Mapping

Level: Undergraduate

This short course will start with an overview of how mapping and spatial analysis are used in real world business, government, and non-profit contexts. Next we’ll cover the basics of digital maps, including file types and map projections as well as best practices for mapping with regards to technology, accessibility, and social responsibility. We will then make choropleth maps, point distribution maps, and heat maps in Tableau, followed by the same in ArcGIS Online, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each. We’ll publish maps in both tools and explore the best ways to share maps in a variety of contexts. Then we'll explore some of the more advanced mapping options in Tableau, like flow maps and spider maps, and discuss their use cases. Finally, we'll use ArcGIS Online to learn how to do basic spatial analysis tasks, such as summarizing data, choosing best facilities, finding hot spots, and creating distance and drive time buffers, and we'll discuss the business and government questions we could answer with those methods.