2012 PROCEEDINGS - Public Relations Society of America

is a current proposal by a rail company in our area to build a coal terminal at the end of the rail
line a few miles away. Students were asked to prepare backgrounders on various issues related
to this proposal, from economic impacts to health impacts to transportation impacts.
One issue students often have is they start with a preconceived notion. Writing a
backgrounder, which is objective, teaches them to look at all angles of an issue or problem. At
the end of the assignment, they were provided information on all topics and asked to write a
recommendation to the local government about whether or not to support the initiative. This led
them to thinking about the objective data and analyzing the big picture, and then creating a
proposed course of action.
Introducing GIS
Part of the backgrounder assignment requires students to gain a basic understanding of
GIS. In terms of their written material, they will be able to use GIS to create geographical maps
that represent a variety of data. Students receive hands-on instruction in ArcGIS through ESRI‘s
Virtual Campus course Learning ArcGIS Desktop. On the first day of class, students are given
an access code for the course. This training session consists of 8 modules and takes about 20
hours outside of class. Part of their grade for the class comes from simply completing the
modules successfully and providing a PDF of their final certificate.
In addition, as part of their backgrounder assignment they are required to make two maps
that will help others visualize the issue. One must be made using basic GIS, while the other may
be created through Business Analyst or Community Analyst. To help them with the software,
we spend four hours in class covering the basics: where to find data, how to link it to the map,
how to use Community or Business Analyst, and how to design a final map. In addition, they
turn in a rough draft and we spend part of one class reviewing the maps and providing feedback
before the final draft is due.
Answering the big questions
In ESRI‘s guide to GIS analysis, Mitchell outlines five steps to take in order to create a
map. We relate the same steps to the backgrounder as a whole. In this way, they must use
critical thinking skills to assess the overall information and the particular information they wish
to map.
1. Frame the question.
The first step in any research is to determine what you want to know. What is the
specific question you are trying to answer. For the backgrounder, it might be ―What are the
health impacts of the new coal terminal on Bellingham citizens?‖ For GIS, it needs to be
connected to geography and, potentially, demographics. So the question might be, ―Who is most
likely to be impacted by coal dust and where do they live relative to the rail line?‖
As they frame their geographic questions, students often find more questions they need to
answer in the backgrounder itself and vice versa. For example, for a backgrounder, one student
was looking at ―Which populations are most likely to become homeless?‖ Her answers led her
to three populations – veterans, those spending more than 30% of their income on housing, and
single-women heads of families making less than a certain amount. Therefore, her geographic
question was looking at where those populations lived within the county, so a homeless shelter
would know which areas to target with information.
2. Understand your data.
Once students have found the data, they need to understand it. What does it mean? For
example, using Business Analyst a student might find that a certain area relative to a proposed
location for an organization spends a lot more, on average, then ordinary citizens in terms of
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