| Project Title | An interactive online textbook for fostering open pedagogy in geomatics |
| Principal Investigator | Paul Pickell |
| Co-Applicant | Evan Thornberry, GIS Librarian, UBC Library |
| Faculty | Forestry |
| Funding Year | 2021 |
| Project Summary | The aim of this project is to develop an interactive online textbook with open educational resources (OER) for teaching geomatics across UBC faculties. Existing OER geomatics textbooks are flat: they lack interactive examples, tools, and case studies that make cutting-edge geomatics so engaging. More importantly, Canada is the birthplace of computerized Geographic Information Systems (GIS), yet existing textbooks (both OER and non-OER) adopted in UBC classrooms rarely focus on environmental management issues, case studies, and examples that are relevant to underrepresented northern communities in Canada. UBC excels in teaching geomatics and should have an OER geomatics textbook that reflects the needs of the diverse student body interested in the discipline. An open pedagogy will be adopted to primarily engage students as the creators of knowledge for the OER textbook. Students currently enrolled in the Master of Geomatics for Environmental Management (MGEM) program will be invited to contribute openly licensed images, figures, interactive embedded web maps, screenshots, examples, case studies, question sets, and suggested activities. The students will be encouraged to draw on their own experiences and use their independent research projects with various community partners as case studies for the OER textbook.The expectation is that once the OER geomatics textbook is published online, it will be a living resource that will continuously be updated each year with contributions from students. Interactive “click and discover” elements in the OER geomatics textbook will be key to enhancing geomatics teaching and learning at UBC and beyond. Interactive web maps will be embedded throughout the online textbook to provide students with a “hands on” virtual experience working with geographic data. Additionally, students will be trained in and exposed to the back-end framework for coding and developing web-based geomatics content. Geographic data visualization will be achieved through immersive 3D scenes that will allow users to zoom, pan, and rotate around terrain or an aerial image. All of these features are available through open source software (e.g., Leaflet, 3D Tiles, SceneJS, Potree viewer). |
| Grant type | OER Implementation |
| Funded Amount | $24,999.00 |
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