TeachOSM
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| Anzahl der Teile | 188 | |
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| Lizenz | CC-Namensnennung 3.0 Deutschland: Sie dürfen das Werk bzw. den Inhalt zu jedem legalen Zweck nutzen, verändern und in unveränderter oder veränderter Form vervielfältigen, verbreiten und öffentlich zugänglich machen, sofern Sie den Namen des Autors/Rechteinhabers in der von ihm festgelegten Weise nennen. | |
| Identifikatoren | 10.5446/31695 (DOI) | |
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| Produktionsjahr | 2014 | |
| Produktionsort | Portland, Oregon, United States of America |
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00:00
Klasse <Mathematik>BitAggregatzustandModulCoxeter-GruppeSchreib-Lese-KopfInhalt <Mathematik>Lesen <Datenverarbeitung>SichtenkonzeptDatensichtgerätOffice-Paket
00:56
Klasse <Mathematik>Zellularer AutomatStandardabweichungMultiplikationsoperatorQuelle <Physik>RelativitätstheorieEntscheidungstheorieGradientRuhmasseDatenreplikationExogene VariableAbstandInformationsmanagementt-TestProzess <Informatik>Kollaboration <Informatik>SymmetrieTopologieQuick-SortIterationÄhnlichkeitsgeometrieInformationRechter WinkelEin-AusgabeDienst <Informatik>UnendlichkeitBasis <Mathematik>Gebäude <Mathematik>Open SourceSystemplattformDifferenteDualitätstheorieMapping <Computergraphik>Figurierte ZahlMAPResiduumMechanismus-Design-TheorieFehlermeldungURLFlächeninhaltGeradeMomentenproblemGüte der AnpassungMereologieSignifikanztestAggregatzustandVollständiger VerbandWorkstation <Musikinstrument>GamecontrollerMathematikDivergente ReiheValiditätGlättungDigitalisierungBildgebendes VerfahrenProgrammierumgebungTaskDatenmanagementBeobachtungsstudieElementargeometrieInstantiierungComputeranimationVorlesung/Konferenz
06:46
TexteditorAggregatzustandWeb SiteKlasse <Mathematik>Physikalische TheorieTopologieOpen Sourcet-Test
07:45
Mapping <Computergraphik>TexteditorProgrammierumgebungTurbo-CodeProdukt <Mathematik>t-TestInformationGebäude <Mathematik>Quick-SortFormation <Mathematik>AdditionKonfiguration <Informatik>Klasse <Mathematik>Weg <Topologie>Formale SemantikDatenstrukturMultiplikationBildgebendes VerfahrenRelationentheorieTouchscreenMinimumComputeranimation
09:19
MereologieDifferentet-TestSoftware
09:45
t-TestMIDI <Musikelektronik>Fakultät <Mathematik>WellenpaketFormation <Mathematik>GruppenoperationComputeranimation
10:11
Rechter WinkelFlächeninhaltt-TestTermGüte der AnpassungOffice-PaketFormation <Mathematik>MultitaskingComputeranimation
10:55
Offene MengeMaterialisation <Physik>Fakultät <Mathematik>Nachbarschaft <Mathematik>MAPKomplex <Algebra>Kollaboration <Informatik>Mapping <Computergraphik>t-TestKontextbezogenes SystemInformationsmanagementFlächeninhaltInformationGradientKlasse <Mathematik>BimodulDifferenteSchreib-Lese-KopfComputerspielInhalt <Mathematik>VerschlingungEndliche ModelltheorieElement <Gruppentheorie>TopologieExogene VariableProzess <Informatik>Open Source
14:08
VideokonferenzDifferentet-TestWellenpaketTaskDeterminanteSpeicherabzugMultiplikationsoperatorMaterialisation <Physik>CASE <Informatik>Konfiguration <Informatik>TopologieSharewareBeobachtungsstudieFlächeninhaltElement <Gruppentheorie>E-MailMereologieKlasse <Mathematik>Interaktives FernsehenDateiformatInformationsmanagementProzess <Informatik>Wort <Informatik>Web logDichte <Physik>
16:20
KoordinatenFlächeninhaltZellularer AutomatMessage-Passingt-TestBitProzess <Informatik>BildschirmfensterProgrammierumgebungTaskKollaboration <Informatik>SpieltheorieTexteditorMapping <Computergraphik>MereologieNachbarschaft <Mathematik>InformationsmanagementSystemverwaltungOffene MengeMultitaskingReelle ZahlGrundraumStörungstheorieWeb SiteDatenmanagementWinkelFächer <Mathematik>EinsSichtenkonzeptXML
19:03
TaskSoftwareentwicklerVersionsverwaltungDatenmanagementDifferentet-TestEinsKonfiguration <Informatik>Regulärer GraphBitZellularer AutomatAdditionStapeldateiWeb SiteUmsetzung <Informatik>Kollaboration <Informatik>Multi-Tier-ArchitekturRückkopplungPeer-to-Peer-NetzTermFunktionalMereologieInformationsmanagementProzess <Informatik>Datenfeld
21:59
Varietät <Mathematik>Data MiningBitSoftwareTurbo-Codet-TestMultiplikationsoperatorMereologieGradientOpen SourceRechter WinkelMaterialisation <Physik>Mapping <Computergraphik>GatewayAnalysisFakultät <Mathematik>Freier Parameterp-BlockSelbst organisierendes SystemGrundraumKollaboration <Informatik>Klasse <Mathematik>Prozess <Informatik>StörungstheorieStatistikQuick-SortGebäude <Mathematik>MathematikStellenringTypentheorieStrategisches SpielStereometrieExogene VariableSpeicherabzugGüte der AnpassungWort <Informatik>SystemaufrufEreignishorizontMAPTexteditorProdukt <Mathematik>Dreiecksfreier GraphInstantiierungTabelleHybridrechnerGruppenoperationComputersimulationSupremum <Mathematik>ComputerspielPhysikalische TheorieTaskStochastische AbhängigkeitE-LearningDateiformatProgrammierumgebungVorlesung/Konferenz
Transkript: Englisch(automatisch erzeugt)
00:00
My name is Richard Hinton and I'm here with Nuala Cowan. We both come from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. And we've been, for the last several years, incorporating a module or an assignment of OpenStreetMap with our GIS classes. Some of you have been to State of the Map and may have seen our presentation on how we do that.
00:21
We're going to talk about that a little bit, but then since the State of the Map in April, May this year, the last six months, a lot has progressed in developing and how this can potentially be used in a much broader audience. You don't have to be geographers, hopefully, to even incorporate this if you want. You can be in various disciplines and public sectors to actually bring OSM into your classroom if you have an interest in doing that.
00:44
So I'm going to start us off talking about what we've done a little bit and then we'll head over to Nuala to talk more about where things are going. And it's pretty cool and interesting stuff. So as I said, we've been incorporating OSM into the classroom for the last few years.
01:02
It started with one class and one instructor, and it's now grown to at least four to five classes each semester. So in 2014, between the spring and fall semesters and our summer sessions, by the time December comes this year, we'll probably have about 250 students altogether that have been contributing to OSM this year.
01:21
When we do it, obviously, most people, when they contribute to OSM, it's a voluntary basis. And people simply do what they pick a job they want to work on, they contribute on their own time. Obviously, we're bringing it to the classroom, we have more of a captive audience, right? They're not, they're selected volunteers, I guess. They're being voluntold, this is what you're doing.
01:41
The way we approach it is that we like to work with a partner. And listed here are some of the partners we've worked with over the last few years. And the collaborations have always worked very well, including American Red Cross, USAID, the Geo Center there. We've gotten support from HIU for the State Department by giving us imagery that we can use and trace from.
02:00
And then some of the projects included finding folks at the World Bank as well. So it's worked fairly well to have this sort of collaboration with our students. So why do we use OSM in the classroom? Obviously, maps, for most people here would think maps are very, know that maps are very applicable regardless of disciplines. More and more people in different disciplines are realizing this.
02:24
We see that in our own classrooms. Not only do we have geography students, environmental studies students in our classrooms, we have people from the business school, international affairs, public health, public policy. These students in different disciplines are realizing that, oh, this digital mapping thing is kind of important and it can be really applicable to our work.
02:41
So OSM is a great way to start introducing people and getting different people involved with geography and mapping. And sort of making them recognize that they can use this kind of tool to help them sort of really tell their story and understand sort of their industry a little better. With ours, the way we do it, I say with having a partner, it really helps them engage in a sort of service learning aspect as well.
03:13
So not only are they just contributing to this larger project, but they're actually working with a partner. And having a partner really adds some gravitas for the students so they're realizing I'm not just doing this for myself or for a grade.
03:25
It's actually helping somebody in another country design their disaster response or their evacuation plans, these kinds of things. And it's also a nice sort of line item they put on their resume that
03:40
they worked on a project with, the World Bank, with USAID, with Geo Center and whatnot. And having this kind of skill, especially in the open source world, is certainly something that's marketable. A lot of employers now are looking for some sort of open source capability in their skill set when they're hiring people on. So we're sort of introducing them to this in this manner.
04:05
So when we want to bring something like this that's typically pretty much a voluntary basis into the classroom, there's a lot of considerations, a lot of things we have to think about. So these are the things that we sort of typically need to go through or have been going through over the last several years to sort of make it a workable assignment and make sure it runs smoothly.
04:24
Obviously we need to make sure everybody has the same amount of work. If you're getting a grade for this, Jimmy doesn't want to have to do twice the work that Sammy does. Right? It has to be fair. But dealing with the real world, say for tracing features, some locations are more densely populated than others.
04:42
So you need to sort of identify sometimes if some areas may be more difficult to do. So these are things we need to consider. And how do we divide up the area? Do we divide up into a series of grids and everybody gets a grid to do? Or do we say, all right, everybody has to do 200 features.
05:00
And you have to do roads and buildings and whatnot. But then because it's this open collaborative platform, we have to find a mechanism to prevent people from overlapping. We don't want duplication of effort because obviously if I digitize a building and then Nuala's next door and doesn't realize that I digitized it, she does the same one, it's going to give an error. So these kind of things we have to sort of figure out to make things work smoothly.
05:23
We also need to track who did what, obviously. We need to be able to find a way very easily and quickly to identify all the information that Jimmy has created and Sally has created so that we can mark it. And going through this way, it also adds a level of validation and quality control to the contributions that our students make to OSM.
05:45
So very quickly, our workflow that we've been working with, it's changed a lot, partly because we've sort of gotten better and more used to doing this. And as well, technology has changed. As technology has changed, it's actually made things a lot easier for us.
06:01
So basically the first thing we need to do is find an area map. If we're working with a partner like we have been, basically the area is chosen for us, essentially. But even still, when you choose an area, you need to obviously investigate it. How much information has already been collected in that area, in OpenStreetMap, how much already exists. The image you're going to be using, is it partially cloudy, is it hazy, you have good quality imagery, these kinds of things.
06:26
We also need to set up an instance in Tasking Manager. This came about, I'm just going to talk a lot more about that, a few years ago to help people collaborate more effectively, essentially. OSM is great for getting a bunch of people to work on data from anywhere in the world.
06:43
Literally, people in country really enabled us to open it up to a much broader audience.
07:08
Initially, when we started with one class, it was an intermediate GIS class. They already understood concepts of topology and tracing and whatnot. ID editor, the in-browser editor with OSM, very easy. And so our new students, introductory students, can now be included with this.
07:22
So now we have our intro classes and our intermediate advanced classes involved in this project. And for grading, we use open source site, Overpass Turbo, because there we can find specific features that any student has done. So we can query using that website, OSM, to find exactly what has been done.
07:46
And another big thing that we like to do is actually find a way to really engage the students. Having our partner come in and talk to students, usually right before the project starts, really adds some heft to it. Because they realize, OK, this is not a paper that I did.
08:02
I'm in history class. I get it back. I throw it in the bottom drawer of my desk. It's stuff I go. It's going to go live to the world. It actually matters because these people are working with people in Indonesia, in Colombia, wherever. And they're actually using this information for disaster preparedness. So it actually really matters. So to get them up to speed, we introduce them obviously to OSM in general.
08:21
We introduce them to the actual workflow, what they have to do, how to use the editor. We tell them how we're assigning the information, obviously how much work they actually have to do. And then we actually get them to use Overpass Turbo to track the road work as well. And then the last thing we like to do is actually have a mapping party. Because when it comes down to it, tracing and digitizing isn't real sexy work.
08:43
And when you have the prospect of doing 300 buildings or a piece of infrastructure, it's like, OK, this is going to get tiresome fast. So we host a mapping party. We make it optional. But we order a pizza. We bring in Coke and Sprite and ice cream and play music. And just in a sort of even more collaborative environment.
09:03
It also helps for students to work together. So sometimes you have to zoom in and zoom out of the imagery, if you've ever done that, to see where does the building actually end or where does the road really go. So sometimes a couple of pairs of eyes help you figure out exactly what it is you need to do, and help you make a better product. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Angela.
09:22
So as Richard said, this started as a pretty small endeavor, with me kind of fiddling around with different softwares to see how you could comprehensively assign something like this to people without having overlap and people getting frustrated or parts of a city being left blank. And it definitely has improved as the technology has gotten better.
09:41
This was our first mapping party. It was a pretty small affair. I think we maybe had anywhere from like a dozen to 15 students. And this is where we're at now. We typically do this on a Friday mid-semester. And over a course of four hours, we will have over 100 people come through. And a lot of the other faculty in our department that are not GIS people,
10:01
they're not, you know, techy at all, they're human geographers. And they've gotten so into this, they'll come and they'll take a training beforehand. There's like one of our faculty dragged her husband in. And we'll have this huge group just working together, music pumping. And a lot of the students actually knock their assignment out during that mapping party because they're like, I'd rather just come in, work with my friends, have a laugh, you know,
10:22
eat a slice of pizza with my professor. And we have bodies everywhere, our conference room, our lab. A lot of professors open their offices and let like people work at their desk. So it's a really good sense of community. And our partners typically will actually come visit when we do these. And you'll see there's like a bunch of adults running around.
10:43
So like the guys from USAID, the guys from Mapbox, Red Cross, a lot of our friends that we work with in the area, they'll just come in to be that, you know, over the shoulder extra guidance for the students. So that's a real kind of a winner in terms of engaging the students. So what the new stuff, the stuff we wanted to talk about today that, you know, isn't just our project and how we do it,
11:03
is this notion of Teach OSM. So in the last few months, a bunch of like-minded people got together and they said, okay, there's all these instructors out there that are starting to do little OSM modules or assignments in their class, different layers, levels of complexity. You know, you have like basic geography classes like we're using them in,
11:23
but then you'll have people in other disciplines. Some people are rolling it into cartography and then maybe taking the data and going further. But we've all this wonderful information. And in the spirit of open source, should we not share the materials that we use to teach with other instructors? We're increasingly seeing, again, at our mapping parties, some of our faculty will bring their friends who are faculty
11:42
in other departments into these parties. And we've had several requests, you know, from let's say there was this one lady from public health and she's like, I really want to do this in my, you know, epidemiology class. Will you guys help me put it together? And we're like, sure, you can like have all our stuff. And then we realized, okay, so there's a lot of things that we do that we take for granted.
12:00
We've done this enough that we can just hit the ground running and set a project up for a hundred kids in inside of a week. But if you're not a geographer or a GIS person, you know, how are you gonna get your head around this? So the idea for TeachOSM was born to be a resource for instructors so that they could add collaborative mapping projects to their classroom.
12:22
So Richard and I are taking the first bash at putting the content together. We have a lot of it developed already. So it's taking a lot of the materials that we developed to use in our class, the stuff that we give to our students, and then also some extra instructor resources. And we hope to go live for Geography Awareness Week,
12:40
which is around November 16th. We kind of hope that we'd be there by today, but we're not quite there. But we've, some of it ready to go. So what is going to be, what's going to sit on TeachOSM? So pretty much all the materials we hope that would be required to help an instructor pick out the area,
13:01
identify and investigate the area that they're gonna work in, how they're going to divvy it up and assign it to their students, how they manage the project as it progresses, and then also how you grade it. You know? If you're from a different discipline, public policy, have you ever graded topology? Probably not. Do you even know what it means? Probably not.
13:21
So explaining those things in a very practical way, because again, you're working with students and we owe it to them for this to be equitable, and we have to have a very kind of open way in which we grade it, okay? So that they, you know, know why they get the grade that they do. So step-by-step design aids for the instructors, so how they can customize the workflow that we developed,
13:44
how they can make that work for them. So we're kind of taking our workflow and maybe stripping it down. We definitely have an interest in disaster response, because that's my background, emergency management. Richard has also done a lot of work in the area. So we're kind of biased towards those stories. But that's not going to be for everybody.
14:01
You may have a high school teacher that wants her students to map their local neighborhood. So it's going to be a lot more interactive. It may involve walking papers and things like that. An element that we have obviously not included in ours. So different options for how you can build that assignment for your class. Again, the grading techniques that we use, the rubrics. And what we've discovered in our different kind of experiments over time,
14:22
we have found that actually recording demos, interactive demos, for our students to use and putting them on our teaching websites, they're really handy. Because, hey, you might do a demo class, and by next week Billy has kind of forgotten how to do it, and it's much easier for him to maybe sit back and go through that little interactive video that we made
14:40
than write a big, long email. And we're like, well, that would be a good way to teach an instructor, too. So we can write out all these instructions. We can also show them how we go on to Tasking Manager, set up a job, how we investigate an area to determine high, low, medium density, show them how to trace and what we mean by good topology. Making that visual, it's an awful lot easier.
15:01
So that's a lot of the stuff that we're currently making right now. And then a lot of the training materials that we use, like we do a training class before our map-a-thons where we teach the students their part of the workflow, how it will all fit together, why it's important. So all that material, again, we've taken that and kind of scrubbed out our preferences, and we will put that on Teach so a professor can take it
15:23
and make it their own and reuse it so they don't have to reinvent the wheel for the assignment. And then more instructional videos of us teaching students that they can use if they want to. And then the one thing that we really want to have on there are case studies. We have met a lot of people, like Stephanie from San Francisco University.
15:43
We know Robert out in Boulder, Colorado. We've met some people from Tulane that have been doing this. There's a lot of people doing this, and they're doing it differently, and we want that reflected on Teach OSM. So the core of Teach will be super basic, stripped down for the first time. Then you can look at the case studies,
16:01
all these different people, how they've applied it in different ways, the local, the remote, working with a partner, not working with a partner. The idea of when Stephanie did hers, she included blogs, so students were constantly documenting their experiences they were working on this. This isn't something we've done, but it's a wonderful option, and it would be great to have that there.
16:22
So how many people know Tasking Manager? Show of hands? Okay, a nice few. So I take the rest of you maybe have either totally not heard of it or heard of it in passing. So Tasking Manager, OSM Tasking Manager, it was developed by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team, or HOT, and the tool was developed to coordinate collaborative mapping efforts
16:43
specifically for disaster-affected areas. Anybody can participate, anybody can jump in and participate in a task, but only administrators can actually set that job up. So by setting a job up, you go in, you create a little task to say,
17:02
hey, we're mapping for Ebola in this country, and then OSM users can go in and they can basically check out a slice of real estate and then go trace that in the OpenStreetMap environment. This was a game changer for us when we scaled up this exercise, because when I did this previously, I was jumping over and back between QGIS and making fishnets
17:22
and putting stuff up on websites, and it was messy on my side to manage. This was an amazing leap for us to be able to work with this. And we're lucky because our partners are part of the community that use this, so the Red Cross, USAID. So we were allowed to create tasks, and we were allowed to work with them.
17:40
But this was created for a specific purpose, and it's not appropriate to open this to all instructors. A high school teacher, as I said, wants to map a neighbourhood with her students. That doesn't belong in humanitarian tasking managers. So our idea, we approached OSM and we said, hey, couldn't we get an educational one of these up and running? And we'll be the administrator, we'll grant any teacher that wants to use it,
18:05
and we'll be the gatekeepers and we can time out tasks that people don't complete. But it's just a wonderful way to teach, and this makes it doable for non-geography people. So they were like, okay, we can consider that. So we got a little bit of seed money from our university, an innovative teaching grant,
18:22
and Pierre Girard from Camp2Camp, who works a lot on tasking manager, a lot of the things that we wanted to see some. I'm actually going a little further here. This is what one of the jobs looks like. So previously you just saw little snapshots of each of the jobs, and when you click on it, this is what it looks like.
18:41
And students can select a little cell, as you can see here, and they check that out and then that automatically opens in an open street map editor window with ID. And what we were like, for teaching, it would be awesome if we could sit down and we can zoom in and out and we can determine if a given cell is easy or difficult or hard.
19:01
We can assign three to Sammy, give him three easy ones, give him two hard ones, and then do the same for each other student. That was something that wasn't in there previously. So we worked with those guys this year with our seed money and they added this capability so that the instructor can go in, and in very simple terms, tag cells as being hard to do, easy to do, whatever.
19:24
And then also the ability to assign a particular cell to someone. The way the original tasking was set up is people went in and they self-chose. When you're dealing with students, of course the smart ones that start early, they'll go in and they'll pick the easy ones. And the procrastinators, the ones that you probably don't want doing the difficult stuff,
19:44
they get stuck with the difficult stuff, and it affects quality. So again, in the spirit of equity, we wanted to be able to have this option to assign it. So this was something that they added to this too. The nice thing was a lot of the additions we wanted to see in Tasking Manager, a lot of our friends, the Red Cross, USAID, World Bank, those guys,
20:02
they were like, I think those are good things to have for the regular Tasking Manager. So they added a little bit of money and we got a lot of new updates on tasking. This is actually version two of Tasking Manager. It was a big revamp this summer. And in the next week or two, a fork of this with all the new toys will be created
20:21
and it will be Teach Tasking Manager. So it will look exactly the same, but the difference will be it's where educators can go to make use of this and we're not kind of polluting the pool here of the disaster community. So it will look exactly the same, have the same functions, but just a different crew.
20:40
So that's, well, I kind of got ahead of myself. That's what I talked about there. But I really want to thank the folks that we've worked with that have made this possible. Miguel Marron at OpenStreetMap, Pierre Girard from Camp2Camp, he put a lot of work into this. Steven Johnson is working with us to get TeachOSM going.
21:00
He's put it up on GitHub. We're very new to all this stuff, so I'm not probably using any of the jargon correctly, but we want the development of the site to be open too. We do feel though, having the first batch and putting it up there, it's much easier to get collaboration when there's something to critique. So rather than just constantly having a conversation about what Teach should look like,
21:22
we're going, okay, here's a first pass, have at it people. So we want people to use it, to critique it, to contribute to it, because teaching this stuff, it looks different, it will look different for everybody, and we want that reflected in every which way, and we don't want it to belong to any one group or belong to any particular tier of education.
21:45
I think that's pretty much it for us. We have a tendency to go over, so we're trying to be very conservative today, and I feel like this is a topic that feedback is the most important part, so if anybody has any questions.
22:01
So, oh, that's how. Okay, I was going to say, how do we join your community practice for this? You can obviously join on GitHub. There is a TeachOSM group, so that obviously, or you can email us directly. Okay, and then you say in November you'll have the toolbox ready? We're hoping that it's going to be up in November. Okay, great, thanks.
22:20
TeachOSM.org is where you go. Okay, it's where it will be. It's just a placeholder right now. Yeah, now after you've had this going for a couple of years in your university, have you seen any increased demand in other disciplines outside of GIS and geography for use of more sophisticated spatial analysis tools and, you know, for research and or teaching?
22:50
In our department has grown considerably over the time that we've been doing this. When I say several years, it's probably been like four, because this stuff obviously wasn't around too much longer than that,
23:01
but definitely other faculty have become interested, and what I like and what we, this is something we spoke about yesterday at an educational panel. We teach introductory, all the introductory classes, we're like the gatekeepers for any of the geospatial learning, and we teach our classes, our GIS classes, to be software independent, so we expose students to the proprietary as well as the open source stuff,
23:23
and we really feel like OSM is almost like a gateway drug to like suck people into the world of geography, the new geography, and we've had a lot of interest from other departments. We've had a lot more departments collaborate with us on kind of traditional spatial analysis too, but definitely, but I think making it accessible to those other departments,
23:41
not making it be, you know, oh, you have to go learn, you know, ArcGIS and spatial statistics, that there is a way, there's a way to do entry-level mapping in a meaningful way as part of your class. I'm just wondering if you've noticed any change to the data around your campus
24:02
or local community, or if you've stocked any of these student accounts to see if they've got addicted to this kind of mapping and taken them to their local community or done their own hot OSM stuff. We haven't looked at any stats, because I know that people can pull stats on who's done what, when. Like when we've done our mapping parties, like the guys at GeoCenter will actually pull a bunch of stuff
24:22
and say, hey, we did like 15,000 edits within two weeks and this kind of stuff. But just this last semester, some students got together and said, hey, why don't we have our own mapping society, specifically for humanitarian efforts. So it's really sort of going to get up and running this semester, and we're going to be hopefully working with like the Red Cross
24:41
and actually start training them so they can actually start their work maybe as a little bit of a backstop for when things go really crazy there. This came from the students, so there is an interest in the student body to say, hey, we can do this on our own as well. And this is going to be like a student-run, like we're the advising faculty for it, but it is a student-run organization. All the seats on the committee there are all student-based,
25:02
and the university gets a little bit of money for them as well to help out with some of their stuff. It's getting up and running now, but there is an interest, and it's because it's from students that we had taught, and then they sometimes bring their friends in and say, hey, look what I'm doing. It's kind of cool, so hopefully it will grow from here. Part of the idea of the society, it's called HMSGW,
25:22
is that the core students will have a good solid GIS background. They've been through many of these OSM things with us. They will bring in other students, and they will train other students. So it's not always people that come through our classes. They're trying to student teaching student, that kind of a thing. And DC is quite well mapped because DC GIS contributed a lot of data,
25:41
and I think we tend to, our students get the bulk of the international disaster response thing, so a lot of our students tend to work at that type of stuff. But if there's a big event, Red Cross will call us and say, hey, can you do a mapping party? And we'll do impromptu events, and we'll have people who have done this three years ago show up,
26:04
bring their roommate. So there's definitely that sense of community in our department about this. So this is the coolest thing that I've seen at this conference, thank you. And from my experience, it's pretty easy to organize mapping parties with students. The idea sells itself. Especially if you feed them. For a classroom environment, I'm curious, if you find there's a student who's done sub-quality work,
26:25
maybe doesn't really care very much, how do you approach that? Do you roll back their edits, or do you go in and redo it? What's your mitigation strategy for that? You know, like for our students that don't do good work, you mean?
26:41
Yeah. As we grade it, we go in and we actually look for, okay, where Jimmy's, all of his edits, so we actually see them come up, we actually physically go in and visually check them. When we see things that are very sort of erroneous or wrong, I have one student digitize a building right over a road, I'm like, really?
27:02
There's not a road going through this guy's house, I'm pretty sure. So I physically go in and change those. We edit them to correct them. And we threaten them. We're like, puppies will die here. Don't screw this up. And it's actually funny, you'll have some of them will do a crappy job of some of their other assignments,
27:21
but they really have taken to this. And I think as we've made our kind of teaching materials better, the quality of their work has improved significantly. For the first time this year, we had this assignment as part of an online class, and I was terrified. If I'm not standing over them, yelling at them, how the hell are they going to do this right? And they did a fantastic job. The amount of stuff we have to fix is minimal, which really has surprised me.
27:43
I think one of the biggest things is sometimes they forget to tag. But that's like an easy thing for us to spot and fix. And Overpass Turbo allows you to query by students so you can just zone in on each one by one, and you can take their work to task. And that's really helped. There's obviously a variety of quality.
28:00
Some people are very particular and digitize every little nook and cranny, and others are a little more general. But as long as the basic infrastructure is there, if they forget the tag, easy fix. I mean, not having the basic infrastructure is why we're doing this. So people in country can now have that and work with it. I was curious how you guys chose your partners.
28:23
I think it started because the first one was American Red Cross because the guy there actually was a student of mine. That's how it started, actually, with Robert. It's funny. I really had to think about that. These guys have been our friends for a couple of years now, so we forget how we got introduced to who, but it's kind of a bit of a buddy network.
28:40
It doesn't hurt that we're all within like five blocks of each other in D.C. We've now won with these guys at Red Cross. We've kind of become drinking buddies, too, so that's helped. We're not drinking mapping party. That's after. But yeah, that's actually how it started. A student of mine had got a job at the American Red Cross, and when he heard I was doing this project, he thought it was kind of fun, and he's like, ooh, could we make this work together?
29:02
It's kind of gone from a very loose collaboration to like big honking projects that we're thinking about six months out. All right, I think that's it. We're out of time. Thanks, guys.