GIS & Society teaching plan
Two ready-to-run discussion designs based on Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Human Cartographic Expertise: one graduate seminar and one mid-level undergraduate class period.
Approximately 3 hours
Best for a graduate GIS & Society, critical cartography, geovisualization, or digital geography seminar where students have completed the essay before class.
| Time | Activity | Facilitation Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00-0:15 | Opening inventory | Students write: what is one form of cartographic expertise that should survive natural-language GIS, and one form that may be mostly procedural? |
| 0:15-0:35 | Position line | Use a spectrum from "AI-assisted mapping threatens cartographic quality" to "AI-assisted mapping exposes overdue gatekeeping." Students stand, explain, then may move. |
| 0:35-1:05 | Question clusters | Small groups choose questions from sections I, III, IV, and VI. They identify the claim underneath each question and what evidence would test it. |
| 1:05-1:15 | Break | Ask students to return with one institutional actor in mind: university, journal, vendor, public agency, nonprofit, or classroom instructor. |
| 1:15-1:55 | Institutional responsibility hearing | Groups represent different actors and answer: what do you owe the public if natural-language GIS becomes normal? |
| 1:55-2:25 | Symmetrical evaluation workshop | Students draft a shared rubric that can evaluate human-made, GUI-made, coded, and LLM-assisted maps by outcomes plus method-specific audits. |
| 2:25-2:50 | Counterargument round | Each group must strengthen the opposing position before defending its own. Keep the tone analytic rather than performative. |
| 2:50-3:00 | Exit memo | Students write a 150-word memo: what should GIS education protect, and what should it stop protecting? |
Approximately 90 minutes
Best for students who need a structured, less polemical path into the essay. Assign the abstract, preamble, questions 1-4, 17-31, 56-66, and 71-74.
| Time | Activity | Instructor Move |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00-0:10 | Quickwrite | Ask: when does someone deserve to be called a mapmaker? Collect two or three answers without correcting them yet. |
| 0:10-0:25 | Mini framing | Introduce the essay's central tension: cartographic judgment remains important, but natural-language tools may change who can participate. |
| 0:25-0:45 | Small-group question sort | Give each group six questions. They sort them into quality, access, labor, ethics, education, and power. |
| 0:45-1:05 | Map evaluation standard | Groups propose three standards that should apply to all maps, regardless of whether they were made by hand, GIS, code, or LLM. |
| 1:05-1:20 | Structured debate | Half the room defends expert mediation; half defends wider access with education. Switch sides after five minutes. |
| 1:20-1:30 | Exit ticket | Students write one better question than the one they arrived with, plus one guardrail for responsible AI-assisted mapping. |
Prompt Cartography