Burtch receives grant to create open lab manual for quantitative methods in geography

Nathan Burtch, Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator, Geography and Geoinformation Science, is creating an open laboratory manual for quantitative methods courses in geography.

Currently, there are no open resources for lab activities for these courses, despite being commonly required courses for geography programs.

Team members for this project will author resources that utilize statistics to solve real-world geographical problems and will make use of a variety of software platforms. As a product, instructors will be able to make two decisions when adopting the manual: use the full set of exercises using a single software platform, or use exercises without being limited to one software program. Data acquisition and lab construction can be a burdensome task, and this proposal lowers the barrier to entry for new instructors. This project will be implemented at Mason and University of Mary Washington, but ultimately Burtch hopes to create an open educational resource (OER) which instructors across Virginia and beyond will use and to which they will potentially contribute.

Burtch received $11,100 from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia for this project. Funding began in February 2020 and will conclude in late June 2022.

###