Interdisciplinary Teaching With Geographical Information Systems Workshop: The Case of the Conquest of Istanbul

Abstract

The Social Studies course has an interdisciplinary structure, offering a learning area where knowledge, skills, and values are combined. The subjects of this course are addressed not under headings such as history, geography, human rights, and citizenship but with an interdisciplinary approach. One of the skills that students are expected to gain during this process is map literacy. While learning about historical events, students should understand the importance of space and the effect of geographical location on events and should be able to evaluate the events using a map. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a software and hardware infrastructure that plans, collects, analyzes, and reports data related to the Earth's surface. Web GIS, with platforms like ArcGIS Online, allows the creation and sharing of web maps using geographic data and spatial analyses. ArcGIS Online offers a practical interface that makes it easy to prepare web maps. The main objective of this research is to determine the effect of using Web Maps, one of the Web GIS applications, on the learning level of middle school students when teaching the topic of the conquest of Istanbul in the Social Studies course. This research was conducted using the pre-test-post-test experimental design within the framework of quantitative research methods and was carried out on a single group. The study group consists of 7th-grade students attending a Science and Art Center in Istanbul. The researcher prepared a success test based on map knowledge regarding the conquest of Istanbul and administered this test as a pre-test before the workshop and as a post-test afterward. Pre-test results showed that the students' level of map knowledge was low. Following this, a map drawing workshop using the Web Map, a Web GIS application, was organized for the students on the 1453 siege of Istanbul. The post-test conducted after the workshop revealed a significant increase in students' scores. This research suggests that Web GIS applications can also be used in other subjects of the Social Studies course.