The mission of the UC Atlas of Inequality is to provide online teaching resources and tools to enable student exploration of global change. Aspects of 21st Century global integration and inequality present great challenges to university teaching. The UC Atlas of Global Inequality attempts to address these challenges using the Internet, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and new graphical capabilities of digital media to enhance learning in Geography, Sociology, Economics, Health, Technology and Environmental Studies. The Atlas integrates data, maps, and graphs to create an interactive website for accessing and analyzing information addressing global change and inequality.

The UC Atlas of Global Inequality promotes knowledge sharing between disciplines by utilizing a technological platform that combines GIS and database technology with Internet multi-media components. This project enables the exploration of global inequality and change by:

1) Making learning objects available for instructors, using the Internet, GIS and database technologies to improve teaching and student understanding.

2) Promoting analysis through technology that enables students to understand and quantify global changes and to encourage understanding of the geo-spatial patterns of global inequality.

3) Provoking critical thinking through cross-discipline learning and research on global inequality.

Instructors are able to present and explore spatially located, quantitative data, using web-enabled GIS and database technologies coupled with a variety of multi-media enhancements. Subsequently, students are able to explore the Atlas individually or in groups to analyze and compare qualitative and quantitative data.