[Qgis-psc] QGIS Education / Certification BoF Notes

Ben Hur Pintor bnhr.xyz at gmail.com
Thu Apr 20 11:09:59 PDT 2023


Hi all and thanks Tim for the update.

I think this is a worthwhile initiative and I'd love to help or be involved
if possible.

I'm a long-time FOSS4G user and educator. I've been doing training and
building QGIS learning resources—most of which in the open—for quite some
time and around 2020, my consulting business BNHR, became a QGIS Certifying
organization—the first here in the Philippines at the time.

During my tenure as part of the Open Knowledge Foundation from 2020 to
2022, I had the privilege to design, develop, and deliver a series of open
geodata training for government and non-government organizations on how to
use QGIS. These events were attended by more than 200 participants from 20
countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. See:
https://school-of-data.github.io/okf-events-a/series/open-geodata-programme/
<https://school-of-data.github.io/okf-events-a/series/open-geodata-programme/)>.
For the training program, I implemented and improved on an innovative
two-phase training format that includes a remote mentoring phase where
participants are guided by mentors on a simple QGIS/mapping project over
the course of a few weeks—an approach that I've since adopted even in my
own training activities.

As part of that program, I also helped develop, co-authored, and currently
maintain an open source QGIS curriculum that is localized for 16 countries
and available in 7 languages (Amharic, Arabic, English, German, Portuguese,
Spanish, and Vietnamese). See:
https://school-of-data.github.io/open-geodata-curriculum/en and
https://github.com/school-of-data/open-geodata-curriculum

Thank you and kindly keep me in the loop.

All the best,
Ben Hur

---
*BNHR <https://bnhr.xyz>*
bnhr.xyz
hi at bnhr.xyz


*BNHR*
liberty. data. geospatial.


On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 2:16 AM Tim Sutton via QGIS-PSC <
qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Dear friends
>
> Attached below are my rough notes from our BoF session on education (&
> certification) that we held today at the QGIS conference. Please note that
> this is an open discussion and not a bunch of mandates. We will groom our
> thoughts into a document which properly describes our plans in a more
> concrete way, and then ask the PSC for a mandate to continue.
>
> Please feel free to pick up a discussion here in this thread if you would
> like more context or you would like to provide more information.
>
> I have created a document
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JoN8ShzLQ5sF6BEYJCiOPZMAWw5sg9l3zt5Jo7OkXjA/edit?usp=sharing> that
> we can use to compose our combined thoughts in a structured manner.
>
> Regards
>
> Tim
>
>    - QGIS Education Bof
>       - Present:
>          - Andre Mano - GIS Expert a.dasilvamano at utwente.nl
>          - Kurt Menke - Certification Team - kurt at septima.dk
>          - Yneke van Iersel -trainee at Geodan yneke.van.iersel at geodan.nl
>          - Mark Terlien - Educator m.terlien at has.nl
>          - Linda Angulo Lopez - Natural History Museum in Paris
>          angulo.linda at gmail.com
>          - Marco Bernasocchi - PSC Chair marco at qgis.org
>          - David van Winsum - incompany Educator
>          david.vanwinsum at anteagroup.nl
>          - Marielle Geers - Educator geersplasmans at hotmail.com
>       - Open Science Initiative - EU funded programmes
>       - Discussion point how to convince departments to adopt QGIS with
>       or instead of ESRI
>       - Needs a 'gently gently' approach rather than hard mandates
>       - Internship market place - discussed idea of pair EU and e.g. SA
>       interns
>       - Possibly Erasmus funding if the partner org is in EU e.g. Kartoza
>       EU
>       - Possibly add new flavour of QGIS certificate specific for
>       internships
>       - Discussed more the idea of getting certification as a trainer
>       rather as an org
>       - Perhaps the trainer can have more specific enrollment requirement
>          - how will we measure competency? Various options discussed:
>          - language issue
>          - standardised course via annointed teachers to bootstrap
>          - Possible starting group of 'annointed trainers'
>             - Giovanni
>             - Ujaval
>             - Hans
>          - Three parts to the programme:
>             - Didactic skills
>             - Technical skills
>             - Ecosystem - how OS and community involvement works, release
>             schedule
>          - Clear criteria for class
>             - Marielle & Mark volunteering to help to develop didactic
>             criteria
>             - Technical skills requirements criteria developed by Giovanni
>             - Ecosystem criteria - Andre Mano to develop criteria
>          - Certification maintenance:
>             - How long will certification last? Criteria like minimum
>             number of certificates to issue over a period (with system implementation
>             to flag these automatically)
>          - Cost for trainer certificate:
>             - Needs to attend the training of an official train the
>             trainer who sets the price himself for the course
>             - QGIS Contribution part of the certification - price TBD
>             - Big mac index pricing for certification?
>             - Need to ensure we spread the grandfathered in train the
>             traininer corps around the globe so that there is good chance to find a
>             trainer course at an equitable fee
>          - Each certified org needs to have at least one certified trainer
>          - Having at least one certified trainer by certified
>          organization, however the certificates can still be issued by non-certified
>          trainers as long as the signature of a certified trainer is also included
>          in the certificate.
>             -
>          - Tim to get Dimas to implement big mac based system and train
>          the traininer system under current QGIS funding (we have about 8 days
>          available TBC). Other technical implementations
>             - Platform may only issue course certificates attached to a
>             certified trainer
>             - Modify the certificates to include the :
>                - Org logo
>                - Training presenter signature (they do not need to be a
>                certified trainer)
>                -
>             - Next steps:
>             - *Tim* to set up a requirements doc and invite all
>             participants to share their ideas with a deadline
>             - Three coordinators to lead the sections in the user facing
>             docs on what the curriculum requirements are (and add them to the
>             requirements doc)
>                - *Marielle & Mark* volunteering to help to develop
>                didactic criteria
>                - Technical skills requirements criteria developed by
>                *Giovanni* (first need to chat to him)
>                - Ecosystem criteria - *Andre Mano* to develop criteria
>             - *Marco:* List of grandfathered certifiers to be identified
>             and agreed with PSC
>             - Communicate to the broader community
>             - *Tim* to put Marielle in contact with Seabilwe and Bridget
>             to share ideas on how to introduce QGIS into schools
>             -
>             -
>             -
>          -
>
>
> --
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Tim Sutton
> Kartoza Co-Founder
> Visit http://kartoza.com to find out about open source:
>  * Desktop GIS programming services
>  * Geospatial web development
> * GIS Training
> * Consulting Services
> Tim is a member of the QGIS Project Steering Committee
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> QGIS-PSC at lists.osgeo.org
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>
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