| Title | Leveraging open-source tools, data, and student power to teach spatial analysis for sustainability |
|---|---|
| Faculty/College/Unit | Forestry |
| Status | Completed |
| Duration | 1 Year |
| Initiation | 04/01/2019 |
| Completion | 06/30/2020 |
| Project Summary | Conservation issues by their very nature are interdisciplinary, multi-faceted, and messy. With the growing access to online global datasets and powerful open-source software, our students have the power to address real conservation concerns using real data. In the senior capstone course CONS452, we have traditionally mentored student teams to design and undertake their own conservation projects using data that we have curated. Here, we propose to create a new learning approach and materials to teach students to 1) take advantage of publically available, messy, real data; 2) use free open-source software that they can continue to use after university (instead of expensive proprietary software we currently use); 3) analyze and share new conservation datasets. Our new approach will equip students to enter the workforce with the skills needed to analyse conservation issues using publicly available resources. It will also ensure a more sustainable model for the course, empowering students to find and curate current datasets, and share them with a broader audience. |
| Funding Details | |
| Year 1: Project Year | Year 1 |
| Year 1: Funding Year | 2019/2020 |
| Year 1: Project Type | Small TLEF |
| Year 1: Principal Investigator | Jeanine Rhemtulla |
| Year 1: Funded Amount | 28,959 |
| Year 1: Team Members | Jeanine Rhemtulla, Associate Professor, Forest and Conservation Sciences, Faculty of Forestry |