Emergence of geo-enabled research in social sciences: The case of societal higher education issues

Introduction

Nowadays higher education (HE) faces many challenges on a global scale where the need for gathering data and analyzing it efficiently is essential in a big-data context and a rapidly changing world. HE, as a central pillar of the knowledge-based society, encounters issues that require exhaustive research for an improved decision-making process and better informed policy-making (Rumbley et al., 2014). Too often HE and geographic information systems (GIS) are connected in terms of how to improve teaching and learning. In contrast, this article focuses on the contributions of GIS from the perspective of the linkage between society and HE, especially in policy and decision-making support, and the promotion of interdisciplinary research between social scientists and technically oriented researchers. However, interdisciplinary research can only be achieved if geospatial education is distributed across the curriculum, hence this is also discussed here. Analyses considering the geospatial factor facilitate trend and pattern spotting as well as discovering and understanding the interrelations that may be hidden within the data. This article argues that the weak connection between GIS and the social sciences, specifically in HE – in terms of research, decision-making support, management of both human and economic educational resources as well as an overall improvement in comprehending the social issues linked to HE – is detrimental to the needs of social science research, the economy and society as a whole. Furthermore, as sociologist Beltrán-Llavador (2010) affirms, it is necessary to study the educational reality without dismissing the temporal and geospatial attributes essential to our identity as social subjects. In this direction, Appadurai (1999) advocates an interdisciplinary research architecture based on the geography of processes. In order to identify and research these processes, the need for a GIS-based system applied to HE’s societal aspects is implied. Likewise Overman (2010), from the London School of Economics, argues that GIS provides new interesting data for economic studies. Socio-economic factors have long been key players in society at all levels, including HE. However the HE approach to GIS as the integrative participant in social science research is still, by far, not as widely employed (and known) as purely statistical approaches. Such slow adoption of GIS in the social sciences is only delaying the obtainment of innovative solutions. However, the space left unattended by purely educational researchers more interested in teaching and learning issues rather than in the societal aspects of HE presents an opportunity for a broad range of social scientists such as sociologists to become experts in this emerging research topic.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows. First comes a presentation of the current situation of societal issues in HE around the world, and big data. Then a short introduction to GIS and its capabilities is given, before presenting the limited but significant GIS-based research dealing with HE’s social aspects. This development is followed by a discussion of the need for a stronger connection between GIS and socio-educational research and for a more comprehensive and complete methodology than the current approaches, based mainly on statistical data without considering the relevance of geospatial factors. The article finishes with a discussion of the missing GIS connection and concludes by emphasizing the need to raise awareness about the connection between GIS and socio-educational research in order to change the current situation and advance in this emerging field while benefiting social sciences research, the economy and ultimately society with better informed studies.

Societal higher education issues and big data

According to Jones (2014), it is necessary to create an infrastructure to support informed decision-making and policy guidance as well as assessing the significant trends and issues. Jones (2014) and Hazelkorn (2014) call for international comparative studies as a solution to the lack of useful strategies and approaches on the matter. In Australia, Jackson and Crabtree (2014) have a similar point of view with regard to the need of support for effective policy-making and the impact of HE in society. In Asia, China is also concerned with HE: its massification versus quality as well as how other policy issues such as localization and internationalization, and centralization versus decentralization will affect the future of the Chinese society (Bie & Yi, 2014).

When addressing inequity in developing countries, it is important to keep in mind how globalized HE may reproduce the socio-spatial inequalities by allowing new forms of differentiation such as already privileged groups studying abroad and, hence, retaining or even increasing their privileges (Perkins & Neumayer, 2014). Understanding the travel patterns of students is another relevant factor for policy-makers due to the effects on the higher education institutions (HEI) and the derived consequences in the local economies.

On a worldwide scale, localization affects HE directly, and global trends influence the individual characteristics of each country’s policy and approach to it as well as how it promotes the transmission of benefits from such trends to its society. Even in projects aimed at obtaining only local societal benefits, the influence of global competition in HE is inherent (Koch, 2014).

The accelerated pace of data creation and gathering makes the task of extracting added value a complex process. This growing volume of data is known as ‘big data’. Geospatial data is no exception to this trend and has become big data in itself (big geodata). The birth of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (2014) in 2011 is proof of the relevance of big geodata and the multiple management challenges it presents in terms of standards, legal instruments and spatial data infrastructures, just to mention a few.

The interdisciplinary research area of educational data mining (EDM) has emerged as a response to big data in an educational context. In EDM the most popular methods and techniques revolve around data analysis and visualization (Romero & Ventura, 2010). It is in this context of big data, of the need for improved infrastructure for decision-making and of assessing significant trends and issues (Jones, 2014) that GIS is presented for social science research, specifically in HE. In fact, this article grew out of some of the conclusions of an on-going project on the geospatial factor.

Why GIS?

GIS is a database with georeferenced objects connected to their attributes with a single identifier. Such databases are known as geodatabases in the geospatial world, and the data populating them is captured using complex geospatial technologies, namely: global navigation satellite systems (such as the popular GPS), laser-scanning, land-surveying, remote sensing and photogrammetry, each having its own issues and its own sources of measurement error. Understanding the existence of these errors and the potential inputting of errors in a GIS-based study is vital (Overman, 2010) for obtaining correct results. Especially considering that any GIS-based research will include data from several sources, in different formats and with different error sources. On the one hand, merging such data in geodatabases is not an easy task, and fixing those errors so the data is compatible requires an expertise that social scientists may not always be familiar with. In addition geospatial analysis concepts and techniques may be relatively new to social scientists. On the other hand, GIS experts may not always have the deep knowledge that social studies require for obtaining substantial results. The need of interdisciplinarity for better informed, and more meaningful, research is therefore clear.

GIS is designed essentially for solving problems, making better decisions, planning successfully, making better use of resources, anticipating and managing change, managing and running operations efficiently, promoting collaboration, increasing understanding and knowledge, and communicating effectively. In order to achieve its aims, the tasks of GIS can be summarized as follows: identifying where things are, querying whether or not certain conditions are applied, performing geographic and spatio-temporal comparisons, finding routes, identifying trends and patterns, modeling phenomena, and (or) simulating them. Therefore, because of its nature, the core, but not the only, application of GIS is decision-making support in a wide spectrum of fields.

Decision-making itself, however, is a complex process. When the matter in hand is complex as well, the task becomes overwhelmingly arduous. Often there are vast amounts of data and surveys on a certain topic. However these are not always available, and when they are, they are often presented by means of inefficient communication methods, to which must be added the human factor (Wang & Ruhe, 2007). On the philosophical side, ‘changing the place from which we look, sometimes also changes the view’ (Lizcano, 2006: 187). In this sense, GIS offers a great opportunity to look at the educational issues from a different point of view, which contributes to advancing the discipline and improving our understanding of HE.

It is in this context of need of support for trend-spotting, decision-making and an overall existing demand to study societal issues related to HE at deeper and longer-term levels that GIS is introduced as an enhanced aid to socio-educational research. Such a context, because of its changing nature and its enormous size, is demanding in terms of the gathering of data, its management and its analysis at multidimensional levels as well as innovative approaches focused on knowledge discovery within big data and big geodata. Furthermore, delivering the research findings in a way the non-expert is able to understand and use for the issues under consideration is a decisive criterion. Too often the results are as complex and burdensome as the issues themselves and are poorly transmitted. Such cases are often followed by the under-exploitation of the existing studies and the waste of resources. GIS offers a means to change that situation and to aid the data discovery to obtain new information (Overman, 2010) through spatial data mining techniques as well as to reinforce the decision-making process in HE issues concerning its socio-economic consequences. Moreover GIS offers approaches for predictions and simulations that consider the territory as the central factor where the phenomena occurs and where the impact of its effects take place. To be sure, making successful predictions is a complex task due to the ‘softness’ of the social sciences, and particularly educational research (Phillips, 2014). However, GIS is able to assist in this task through its multiple spatio-temporal capacities.

When the ‘geographic’ in GIS is understood as a connection not only to the physical location but also to the human phenomena, the connection to social issues becomes meaningful. Nowadays GIS is more than computer science and technology; it stands at the crossroads of information and communication technologies (ICT), humanities and social sciences (Goodchild & Janelle, 2010; Lo & Young, 2007). This article argues that decision-makers and society as a whole will benefit from such spatial-critical thinking specifically in HE, but this statement is not made lightly. In recent years several authors have noted the need for more critical spatial thinking. Kim and Bednarz (2013) argue that students who learn GIS improve their critical spatial thinking. Goodchild and Janelle (2010) assert the importance of location and geospatial patterns as a strong influence in strategic planning and view GIS as the essential integrating piece for the interdisciplinary perspective. Jessop (2008) and Boonstra (2009) also call attention to the relevance of geospatial information as an indispensable part of research in the humanities while recognizing the slow adaptation of GIS to humanities research needs. Goodchild and Janelle (2010) also emphasize that critical spatial reasoning has not been given priority in humanities disciplines. Likewise the White House launched a place-based initiative (Orszag et al., 2009) accentuating the value of understanding the concept of ‘place’ for developing policies and implementing plans efficiently. Furthermore the vision of a Spatial University proposed by Esri (Sui, 2014), a leader in the GIS industry, aims at employing geospatial technologies to their maximum capacity through four specific objectives: (1) including spatial thinking across the curriculum, as mentioned above – this improves students’ abilities; (2) developing a geospatial workforce that takes advantage of the career opportunities associated with geospatial technology (Gewin, 2004; United States Department of Labor, 2010); (3) geo-enabling research through interdisciplinary research enabled by the geospatial perspective; (4) utilizing GIS for smart campuses to support their management. In short Esri is proposing to include GIS in the curriculum, in educational research, in education resources management and in decision-making, much as statistics have been in the past. The inclusion of the geospatial factor is a natural outgrowth of the existing statistical approaches. Nonetheless it is significant to note that GIS does not exclude statistical approaches but rather includes them in a more complete analysis process, thereby enriching it.

In line with the authors above, the importance of the connection between the power of ICT, humanities and social sciences is supported in this article, and it is argued that it is precisely the central and integrative position of GIS that makes it remarkably suited to the task of socio-educational research, managing, planning and supporting decision-making in HE. Consequently the opportunities for experts working in an interdisciplinary, geospatial and social science perspective are enormous, and their contributions to the knowledge-based society is a great opportunity to expand the social sciences disciplines and increase their, often neglected, importance in society.

One key concept in GIS is the visualization of geographic information (Maceachren & Kraak, 1997). GIS maps are a very effective communication instrument (Kraak & Ormeling, 2003). Furthermore Heer et al. (2010) state that the goal of visualization is to assist in the understanding of data by taking advantage of the human visual system’s capacity to see patterns, spot trends and identify outliers.

This is significant because, through properly designed geospatial analysis, GIS is able to improve future socio-educational research while making its results more appealing and engaging to decision-makers as well as to the wider public. In fact the International Cartographic Association describes its strategic mission as ‘to ensure that geospatial information is employed to a maximum effect for the benefit of science and society’ (Virrantaus et al., 2009: 63), and emphasizes ‘the extraction of added value from the processing of spatial data on maps’ (Virrantaus et al., 2009: 64), thus reinforcing the connection between GIS and the social sciences.

It is important to note that research approaches employing GIS as the integrative element for improved spatio-temporal studies, for example monitoring changes and policy impacts on HE, remain scarcely researched. This situation is clearly visible from browsing the leading journals dealing with HE-related issues or simply, as it has been done here, by searching the SCOPUS scientific database using the keywords ‘GIS’ (or, alternatively, ‘geographic information systems’) and ‘higher education’, and the inclusion of such words in the abstract or in the article title. Referring to leading journals or top reference journals like those classified in the first quartile (Q1) by the Web Of Science, the results shows that, to date (22 February 2015), of the 573 results, none of the top reference journals have published recently any research papers analyzing the different effects of HE in society employing a GIS approach (for example, analyzing student retention patterns, the management of educational infrastructures, or the economic impact of certain educational policies on the territory). Among those papers published in journals ranking in the second quartile (Q2) and below, most of the papers found focused on teaching and learning GIS or on its application to learning in other disciplines. Although a few studies do analyze socio-educational matters employing GIS, these are still minimal and, as mentioned above, none of these articles are published in leading specialist journals, thus reflecting the little attention paid by high-impact researchers, and journals, to such a powerful technology as GIS. This, however, should be seen as an opportunity to expand and develop a specialization where social geospatial scientists with a focus on education-related issues can become the new leading researchers and a socially recognized reference. The relevance of applying GIS in the HE field is of utmost importance due to the position of the latter in the knowledge-based society, and the beneficial contributions of the former. Applying GIS would provide a wider perspective on the educational reality with respect to, specifically, processes, relationships and best practices (Beltrán-Llavador, 2010), while enabling, de facto, different points of view that would enhance social science and geospatial research, and optimize the planning and spending of resources. In short, research opportunities are being missed, and money is being lost.

Connecting GIS and societal higher education issues

There are many studies on HE issues at multiple levels, and yet many of these studies focus mainly on statistical data, pushing aside its limitations. To overcome those limitations, some improvements are necessary (Pérez-Gómez, 2012). This article argues that improvements will come through a stronger GIS–HE connection. A few GIS-based decision-making support systems have already been implemented. Wang et al. (2009) presented a system developed at Peking University aimed at helping researchers, educational decision-makers and the public to become familiar with the information for decision-making. In addition to their system, Wang et al. (2009) also presented two other GIS-based systems for decision-making in HE. Thanks to the ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy implemented in the state of Arkansas (USA) in 2001, the National Office for Research on Measurement and Evaluation Systems (NORMES) adopted the use of GIS. Specifically, GIS was employed to identify the spatial and the spatio-temporal trends, and the complicated geospatial relationships among the educational datasets while taking advantage of the analytical and visual delivery abilities of GIS. The third GIS-based decision-making system presented by Wang et al. is the Oregon State Board of Education Decision-Support Pilot Project (OSBEDSPP) implemented by the Oregon State Board of Education, the Oregon University System and Oregon State University. In this case the focus is on demonstrating to policy-makers that GIS is able to provide an advantageous approach for displaying and manipulating demographic and statistical data and, as a result, assisting a better-informed decision-making process for developing the workforce and funding colleges (Oregon State Board of Education, 2004; Wang et al., 2009).

A similar model to that presented by Wang et al. is suggested by Singleton et al. (2012), whose aim is to model participation in HE while harnessing the power of spatial interaction modeling to demographic classification. The overall objective of such a model is to provide a strong engine for testing various policy scenarios and simulate how student participation could be affected depending on the institution and neighborhood type.

On a different scale GIS has been used effectively to study the layout and structure of HE at the regional level. Studying the layout includes exploring the relationship between HE and the economy, population and geographic environment. In other words, it requires inquiring into the social–physical interface. The overall aim was to rationalize the planning of the distribution of HE spatial resources and provide scientific support for decision-making (Liu & Wen, 2013). Furthermore employing GIS for monitoring performance of HEI ensures a competitive advantage by facilitating trend-spotting and locating where solutions may be applied more successfully to reduce social inequity (Zahorjanski & Veljovic, 2011). The work of Warren et al. (2014) is an example of a similar study where employing GIS would have been useful, and Draelants’ (2014) research on the reproduction of social inequalities within schools could be expanded and improved as well by employing GIS methodology. Hanewicz (2009) worked on applied spatial analysis for researching student retention patterns aimed at helping establish where to initiate specific programs or where successful students live, while Perkins and Neumayer (2014) analyzed student mobility issues from a GIS perspective. Both studies demonstrate the value of GIS-HE research to support university policy and educational decisions as well as the connection between HE and social issues, for instance, the risk of perpetuating inequity through access to student mobility programs. The educational GIS-based decision systems in existence are still highly experimental, and further work on these systems and other alternative approaches to designing and implementing GIS-based support systems for decision-making is needed.

In a wider perspective, the University of Redlands, a liberal arts university in California, has adopted the ‘spatially infused learning community’, where GIS is the cornerstone of this approach adopted in an effort to not only teach and promote critical thinking but actually to employ it across the curriculum in all disciplines, including education and business, and to promote spatially integrated research (Center for Spatial Studies, n.d.; Yarbrough, 2015). As a result of having strategically oriented the university towards teaching GIS, and promoting its use in research, the University of Redlands is a candidate for becoming a reference model for those universities aiming at providing their students with modern skills and abilities for their future careers while enhancing traditional research methodologies, especially in the humanities and social sciences. However, such a model might be a cause for dispute among more traditionally oriented scholars, who could perceive the classical research methods and the purity of their discipline as being at risk. Although it is yet too early to draw specific conclusions about the ‘spatially infused learning community’ approach based on real data, because of its extremely recent application, the earlier literature on teaching and researching employing GIS (Bearman et al., 2015; Blaschke et al., 2012; Ferrandino, 2015; Hanewicz, 2009; Kim & Bednarz, 2013; Misra et al., 2012; Pérez-Gómez, 2012; Perkins & Neumayer, 2014; Radinsky et al., 2014; Singleton et al., 2012; Zahorjanski & Veljovic, 2011) suggests that promising outcomes will result from this spatial integration.

The connection between GIS and social science research will not be complete until significant researchers and high-impact journals begin to disseminate studies using a geospatial approach, thus recognizing its capabilities in the analysis of socio-educational issues, and reaching stakeholders and the wider public on a large scale. For instance, the comparative study by Ertl et al. (2015) is an example of where GIS could be applied to enhance social science research in HE-related issues. Smith and Smith’s (2014) work on trends in educational advantage by area on a multi-temporal scale is a perfect example of educational research where the statistical data should be integrated in a GIS-based system for spotting and modeling trends owing to its enhanced spatio-temporal analysis capabilities. In this case the geospatial factor is not only relevant, it is the dominant factor in their study. Had GIS been used, it is certain that the study would have provided better-informed, and more engaging, results. Similarly there is a large volume of socio-educational research that focuses only on employing statistical data when a more advanced and integrative tool, such as GIS, is available. The longer it takes for academics and policy-makers to widely adopt GIS in socio-educational research, the longer it will take to substantially advance the knowledge base.

As demonstrated above, geospatial information can, and must, play a central role in social science research as a whole, and specifically in socio-educational research, so as to improve future inquiries. A strong connection sustained over time between GIS and socio-educational research would be extraordinarily beneficial for researchers, stakeholders, the economy and society as a whole.

Discussion

GIS is widely employed in many fields, for instance environment, transportation, urban planning, real estate and geomarketing, just to mention a few. Many disciplines such as public health also benefit from GIS. In fact 11 years ago the US Department of Labor already ‘identified geotechnology as one of the three most important emerging and evolving fields’ (Gewin, 2004). In this direction, the US National Research Council (NRC) published a report (National Research Council of the National Academies, 2013) insisting on the importance of the emergence of geospatial technologies and the need for more geospatially enabled professionals in the USA, considering the current and future potential gaps.

Two interesting examples are the studies aimed at finding geographic trends in male factor infertility (Odisho et al., 2014) and those targeting the spatial distribution of underweight, overweight and obesity (Turi et al., 2013). A few other noteworthy examples of GIS research are available at the Stanford University Geospatial Center through its library’s website (Stanford Geospatial Center, n.d.). However, the use of GIS in socio-educational research still remains underexploited, hence the need to draw attention to this methodological approach and its enormous potential, be it for researching efficiency (Misra et al., 2012), student mobility (Perkins & Neumayer, 2014), facility management (Esri, 2012) or the labor market after graduation (Baum & Mitchell, 2010; Lindley & Machin, 2014), to mention a few; the number of potential applications of GIS for analyzing the social aspects of HE is huge. In such a situation this research area uncovered by purely educational researchers must be conquered by geo-enabled social scientists empowered with the powerful ammunition provided by GIS and its capabilities.

In a world where everything is more and more intertwined and connected, ‘applying GIS technology to new circumstances is an engagement of new relationships in the social praxis of technology transfer’ (Veland et al., 2014: 296); this implies the relevance of applying GIS in social sciences. When the information obtained from mining big data is visually available, the interrelations, patterns and trends are more easily spotted, while the information conveyed reaches its audience more efficiently. The analytical capabilities of GIS at global, regional or local levels, as well as multi-temporal, and multi-dimensional levels, allow the inclusion of the already existing statistical data, accordingly adding value and increasing the analysis possibilities. Moreover the combination of data from several sources resulting from previous studies in a way that makes sense while including geospatial data is possible by implementing a GIS-based system, thus facilitating a better understanding of the interrelation between studies and the comparative studies themselves through the geospatial factor. In fact, GIS provides a concrete application of Ragin’s (1981) logic comparative method in the socio-educational research field (Beltrán-Llavador, 2010). This is of special relevance as a result of the internationalization of HE (De Wit & Hunter, 2014), the increasing number of mobility students around the world (Perkins & Neumayer, 2014) and, overall, the increasing effects of global trends on academic institutions (Altbach, 2014), all of which call for more comparative studies. As a result, holistic approaches aimed at understanding the social features of HE globally and employing GIS to achieve that aim will become more significant than those employing more traditional approaches that do not benefit from a geospatial approach.

Conclusions

The current conditions exposed in this article are ideal for geo-enabled social scientists to exploit the opportunities to advance the research in the discipline while increasing its significance in the knowledge-based society through the contributions focused on its cornerstone, HE, and its interaction with social agents.

In a GIS-based system where socio-educational data is gathered, stored, managed and analyzed, the information can be synthesized for each specific issue at hand while allowing different approaches, optimizations, simulations and predictions that would amplify current social science research. In addition the impact of the policies and decisions related to HE can also be analyzed employing GIS, which would allow the reinterpretation and re-contextualization of indicator systems (Beltrán-Llavador, 2010) in a wider perspective provided, precisely, by the application of spatial analysis. Moreover researchers’ exposure to the new sources and types of geospatial data integrated in a GIS will result in an increased understanding (Overman, 2010) of socio-educational issues. Too often understanding the findings of research studies and analyses performed by experts is as complicated as the studies themselves, but that is not the case with GIS since it allows the extraction of information from big data while communicating it in a synthesized manner that other approaches lack, thus being able to easily reach and engage both experts and non-experts, stakeholders and the wider public.

The GIS-based socio-educational research presented above is a clear example of the powerful performance offered by the emerging methodology of GIS in its application to HE societal issues. However, more approaches of this kind are necessary in order to discover the most efficient and effective practices and methodologies that will bring the best results and the greatest benefits to the research community and to society as a whole. Furthermore, the current under-exploitation of GIS capabilities in a topic as important and relevant to the knowledge-based society as the societal challenges related to HE is a strong indicator that the GIS connection has yet to be fully adopted. Even though the few existing contributions are very significant and enlightening, they reflect the urgent need to raise awareness about such a connection while promoting more interdisciplinary research in this direction.