ISCAP Proceedings: Abstract Presentation
Leveraging Location Analytics for IS Education and Interdisciplinary Research
Dan Farkas
Pace University
Namchul Shin
Pace University
Abstract
Many questions about the human experience—how people live, move, work, learn, and interact with their environments—are inherently shaped by place. For Information Systems (IS) academics and educators, Location Analytics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide an increasingly accessible and powerful mechanism to teach data literacy and facilitate cross-disciplinary academic research.
This presentation introduces Location Analytics as a shared interdisciplinary framework rather than an isolated technical specialty; positioning IS programs as the natural bridge across academic domains. By integrating spatial tools into the classroom, IS educators can help students transition from basic data consumers to advanced analytical thinkers. The session highlights how to implement this framework effectively:
• Integrating Robust Open Datasets: Drawing on widely used data sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS), regional open data portals (like NYC Open Data), and social media text, such as Tweets, the session demonstrates how demographic, social, economic, and environmental data can be spatially examined to enrich IS instruction.
• Leveraging Accessible Spatial Platforms: The presentation features platforms like Social Explorer and Esri ArcGIS Online, emphasizing their intuitive interfaces, robust data collections, and high suitability for exploratory student projects and collaborative research spanning business, sociology, criminal justice, and the humanities.
The presentation focuses on how IS educators can utilize spatial data and visualization to help students and researchers identify patterns, contextualize lived experiences, and generate new interdisciplinary questions. Case examples will illustrate how location-based analysis complements quantitative analysis, qualitative interpretation, and creative inquiry within IS curricula and research methods.
References & Resources
• Journal of Information Systems Education (Expected 2026). Special Issue: Location Analytics: Shaping the Future of IS Education.
• Erskine, M. A., Pick, J. B., Satpathy, A., Díaz López, A., Sarkar, A., & Shin, N. (2024). Location Analytics in Information Systems: Opportunities for Research and Teaching. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 55, 535-565.
• Esri ArcGIS Online: https://www.arcgis.com/
• Social Explorer: https://www.socialexplorer.com/