Arthur Gill Green, Teaching and Learning Fellow, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, University of British Columbia and College Professor, Okanagan College Elissa Liu, Student, University of British Columbia, Vancouver Festival of Learning - Burnaby, B.C, from June 6–9, 2016.

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Open Educational Resources
for GIScience
Arthur Gill Green
Elissa Liu
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This presentation explains why and how we
decided to develop QGIS modules for teaching
Geographic Information Science.
Last updated June 2016
Part I: The Story
(or “Why we did it”)

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GIS
A system of hardware,
software data, people for
collecting, sorting analyzing
and disseminating
information about areas of
the Earth.
*Bonus note: the first GIS
was a Canadian invention :)
Source: https://www.gislounge.com/gis-timeline/

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Why worry about the
status quo?
Democratic society and healthy academic research practices need
more than a benevolent corporate sponsor… They need to be open
and have access to open educational resources.
The “industry standard” is changing… Businesses, consultants, and
researchers have started to use Free and Open Source Software
for GIS (FOSS4GIS).

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FOSS4GIS
Free and Open Source Software for GIS.
Lowers cost and licensing barriers, creates community, unleashes creativity
(licensing not an issue), and sometimes simply does the job better.
Responsible Pedagogy and GIScience
Imagine if professors required students to write essays on a specific OS.
This is what we require our students to do in GIS when we ignore alternatives.
Responsible Pedagogy and GIScience
Imagine if driver’s education instructors required their students to drive
Gremlins when there is a Tesla ready for them to use. If they both do the job,
why require one over the other?

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Responsible Pedagogy and GIScience
Imagine if people were only ever exposed to automobiles as a possible
transport option because… Well, that is what the instructor felt most
comfortable teaching. We need skills on a variety of platforms.
Responsible Pedagogy and GIScience
Force students to use one proprietary
software when there are strong,
sustainable alternatives available?
Most students graduating have never
been exposed to the alternatives.
Responsible pedagogy requires that we
show the options and that we lower
barriers to learning.
Part II: The Process
(or “How we did it”)

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Step 1: Establishing our
needs and learning objectives
Deliverables
Step 2: Using existing QGIS tutorials as a foundation.

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Step 3: Working through openly licensed content.
Step 4: Integrating
local data.
OpenStreetMap is open data.
We chose a little town
named Hope.

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Step 5: Students do the new modules
and give feedback.
Incorporating feedback from the instructor, teaching
assistants, research assistants, students… and now you!

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Step 6: Finding a platform to
share the QGIS modules.
Step 6: Finding a platform to
share the QGIS modules.
1. Openly licensed
2. Open for comments and changes (versioning)
3. Easy to use (low entry barrier)
4. Replicable to guarantee longevity.
5. No limits on downloads
6. Few limits on document conversions.
It’s Yours Now
We invite you to collaborate…
The module is licensed under CC BY SA 4.0.
You can simply download the module from the Google Doc links on the
following slides.

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Download QGIS, the module, and the data
Link to Module 01:
https://goo.gl/U8ZFg4
Link to download QGIS:
http://qgis.org/en/site/
Links to data:
http://greengeographer.com/gis/modules/Module01_QGIS.zip
http://opengeography.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2016/06/Module01_QGIS.zip
Feedback: https://goo.gl/forms/tE0DOln3kmOrn3xC2
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Thank you!
Contact information:
Gill Green: arthur.green@mail.mcgill.ca & @greengeographer
Elissa Liu: elissa1@alumni.ubc.ca
More information: http://open.geog.ubc.ca/
Open Educational Resources for GIScience by Arthur Gill Green and Elissa Liu is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Citations and License
The presentation can be downloaded here: https://goo.gl/KTjSHM
Image sources and licenses are in the notes of each slide.
Map images from OpenStreetMap are licensed under CC BY SA 2.0.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright