Felt for educators: best strategies to keep students engaged

Educators at Cornell University and Cal State Fullerton are incorporating Felt, a mapping tool, into their curricula to enhance student engagement and motivation. At Cornell, Assistant Professor Wenfei Xu integrated Felt into her Mapping and Countermapping course to provide students with practical experience in handling primary source survey data alongside other tools like QGIS and Mapbox Studio. Recognizing the importance of mappers as intermediaries between communities and government, Wenfei aimed to equip students with skills to gather and analyze data for public advocacy. Prior to using Felt, creating collaborative maps was challenging, often requiring manual efforts before digital conversion. In one assignment, students recorded their daily routines using Mergin Maps and then visualized the data in Felt, while another task involved mapping local points of interest in Ithaca to aid new City Planning students. Wenfei's guide to using Felt for educational purposes is available on GitHub.