The week of Summer School is over. For five exciting days, participants from SPIDER partner universities, the University of Zagreb, TU Delft, KU Leuven, Bochum University of Applied Sciences, and Lund University, and colleagues from the SEED4NA project have been learning about and putting their hands on open SDI. The diversity of experts in different areas, ranging from statistics, computer sciences, and geodesy to geography, and coming from different parts of the world (Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Mexico, Morroco, Spain, …) showed how open SDI can benefit from a plurality of ideas and new insights.
During this five-day event, students had the opportunity to learn about open SDI, and its technological and nontechnological components, in a more active way. The open data sessions were conducted by the University of Zagreb (Faculty of Geodesy), an expert in the domain of geospatial data and data acquisition; by its prominent professor Željko Bačić, Hrvoje Tomić and Vesna Poslončec-Petrić. In these sessions, students learned about open data availability and did their in-the-field measurements which were later used to create noise maps. The open technology part of open SDI was presented by Carsten Kessler, Ali Mansourian, and Pengxiang Zhao coming from Bochum University of Applied Sciences and Lund University, both universities with a long-standing experience in research and education in the field of SDI and its applications. They introduced students to interoperability, standards, and semantics in open SDI with interactive sessions where students had the opportunity to learn how to use available open web services for their own potential needs. Finally, the open participation part of open SDI was introduced by experts from TU Delft and KU Leuven, two very well-known universities in Europe. Bastiaan van Loenen, Stefano Calzati, Glenn Vancauwengerghe and Cesar Casiano Flores introduced students to the concept of open SDI and ethics and user needs behind it. In these sessions, students had the opportunity to play serious game and discuss potential scenarios around open SDI.
Summer school, as part of active learning, introduced also a Problem Based Learning approach, a student-centered approach in which they learned about a subject by working in groups to solve an open-ended problem. Students had to come up with an idea of how to develop/apply open SDI and had five days to conceptually develop the idea. Divided into groups, students had supervisors who helped them realize their idea.
The final event of the Summer School was the Open SDI Day. This event was also the final event of the SPIDER project so the participants heard about the most recent project developments. Besides promoting the Open SDI Toolkit, a useful guide for teachers, the MOOC on Open SDI was also presented. This new content was developed for students, to help them better understand the ecosystem of open SDI.
Photos by: Mark Panek, Bochum University of Applied Sciences
