Developing a crowd-sourced community mapping application for students’ sense of community and belonging

Keywords: community mapping, sense of community, sense of belonging, undergraduate students
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most undergraduate students took online courses from home and had fewer opportunities to participate in community events. Due to this reason, not many students know about the community outside of the campus. Students’ engagement in the community plays an important role in their sense of community and belonging, which is a key to their educational success. Using the user-centered design, the crowd-sourced community mapping application was designed and developed to provide curated, useful, and important place information based on current students’ experiences. This mapping application can be helpful for students, particularly freshmen and transfer students to enjoy their college life and feel more connected to the community. It can also be helpful to promote the geography program’s visibility on campus by introducing GIS technologies to students.