Syllabus Spring 2017
The following syllabus applies to the Spring-2 2017 offering of GEOG 585 (Last updated February 13, 2017).
GEOG 585: Open Web Mapping.
Design, development, and implementation of web mapping applications using OGC standards and open source software.
Prerequisites: GEOG 485 GIS Programming and Automation
- Instructor
- Course Overview
- Required Course Materials
- Assignments and Grading
- Course Schedule
- Course Policies
Instructor
Dr. Jan Oliver Wallgrün: Instructor, John A. Dutton e-Education Institute, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, is the lead instructor for GEOG 585.
- Course e-mail: Registered students please contact me using Canvas e-mail.
- Personal e-mail: Prospective students and others can contact me at wallgrun@psu.edu [1]. Feel free to also use this e-mail address if Canvas is down.
- Availability: I check e-mail each weekday (unless otherwise noted in advance) and am available for a live chat on an appointment basis.
Course Overview
Geography 585: Open Web Mapping is a 10-week online course that gives you experience with sharing geographic information on the Internet using free and open source software (FOSS) and open specifications. It is an elective course in Penn State's online geospatial education programs [2], including the Master of Geographic Information Systems.
The two main purposes of Geog 585 are to help you understand the importance of web services and to give you some experience making web maps with FOSS and open standards. You could certainly implement web services using proprietary software, too; however, the cost of a proprietary GIS server package makes FOSS an attractive area of study for basic web mapping tasks.
The purpose of Geog 585 is not to promote FOSS over proprietary software, or vice versa (you could find plenty of materials on the Internet debating this subject); however, Geog 585 should familiarize you with the capabilities and shortfalls of the current FOSS landscape to the point that you can make an informed decision about how to use FOSS in your own web mapping tasks.
The set of FOSS and open data sources you will be exposed to in Geog 585 includes QGIS, GDAL, GeoServer, GeoWebCache, TileMill, OpenStreetMap, and OpenLayers. You will also learn about open data standards such as GeoJSON, KML, and OGC web service specifications.
Prerequisites
This course requires you to do some programming with JavaScript and the OpenLayers API. You don’t have to know anything about OpenLayers yet, but it is required that you have:
- enough formal experience with writing computer programs or scripts that you are comfortable identifying and using fundamental constructs such as variables, loops, decision structures, error handling, objects, and so forth. A B grade or above in Geog 485 [3] satisfies this prerequisite. Exceptions require equivalent programming experience and instructor approval.
- Enough experience with JavaScript that you are able to easily identify the above constructs when you see them in a piece of JavaScript code. A B grade or above in Geog 863 [4] satisfies this prerequisite, or you can do your own preparation using the W3Schools JavaScript tutorial [5].
- Enough experience with HTML and CSS that you are easily able to view and interpret the basic elements of page markup, such as the head, body, script tags, and so forth. Geog 863 [4] satisfies this prerequisite, or you can do your own preparation using the W3Schools HTML tutorial [6].
Required Course Materials
There is no required textbook for this course. You will be required to complete various online readings.
If you will not have a consistently available Internet connection available during this course, please contact the instructor prior to beginning.
Assignments and Grading
Geog 585 has nine lessons. Each of them is one week in length. The tenth week of the course is reserved for you to work on your term project (described further below). On most weeks, you will see:
- conceptual lesson materials
- a walkthrough that takes you through a new piece of software or functionality step by step
- an assignment that typically expects you to apply what you learned in the walkthrough. Be aware that some assignments have multiple parts, and some weeks’ assignments are worth more than others’.
The walkthroughs and assignments in Geog 585 require a significant time commitment to complete and often involve installing or using new software. Please start working on the lesson at the beginning of the week to allow for completing a high-quality deliverable on time and any troubleshooting that might be necessary along the way.
Quizzes
Quizzes are administered throughout the course to test your knowledge of the material and your ability to think and reason independently about the concepts presented.
Term project
During the course, you will work on a term project that synthesizes the skills that you gain throughout the lessons. Many of the weekly assignments are directly related to building your term project;, in other words, you can use your term project data in the weekly assignments, and some pieces of your weekly assignment deliverables may appear in your term project deliverables. The final week of the course is set aside for full-time work on your term project.
Grading
Deliverables are weighted in the following fashion to obtain your grade:
- Weekly assignments – 50%
- Quizzes – 20%
- Term project – 30%
Letter grades will be based on the following percentages:
A | 90-100% |
---|---|
A- | 87.5-89.9% |
B+ | 85-87.4% |
B | 80-84.9% |
B- | 77.5-79.9% |
C+ | 75-77.4% |
C | 70-74.9% |
D | 60-69.9% |
F | <60% |
X | Unsatisfactory (student did not participate) |
Percentages refer to the proportion of all possible points earned by the student after the above weights have been applied.
Late work
Any assignment not submitted by the due date on the course calendar in Canvas shall incur a 10% deduction in grade prior to any other deduction made by the instructor when grading the assignment. An additional 10% will be deducted for each additional week late. The instructor may choose to modify or waive these penalties under exceptional circumstances (such as severe health issues).
GEOG 585 Course Schedule
Weekly assignments (for weeks 1-9) and quizzes (in weeks 3, 6, and 9) are always due at the end of each week by Wednesday, 23:59h in your local time zone. In addition, a brief term project proposal document needs to be submitted at the end of week 2. In week 10, a video demonstrating your term project needs to be submitted by the end of Sunday; the remaining term project deliverables (report and reviews of two other students' video) are due by the end of Wednesday (last day of class).
Date: | Week 0 |
---|---|
Objectives: |
|
Readings: | Orientation lesson pages |
Assignments: | Introduce yourself to the rest of the class. |
Date: | Week 1 |
---|---|
Objectives: |
|
Readings: | Lesson 1 online materials |
Assignments: |
|
Date: | Week 2 |
---|---|
Objectives: |
|
Readings: | Lesson 2 online materials |
Assignments: |
|
Date: | Week 3 |
---|---|
Objectives: |
|
Readings: | Lesson 3 online materials |
Assignments: |
|
Date: | Week 4 |
---|---|
Objectives: |
|
Readings: | Lesson 4 online materials |
Assignments: |
|
Date: | Week 5 |
---|---|
Objectives: |
|
Readings: | Lesson 5 online materials |
Assignments: |
|
Date: | Week 6 |
---|---|
Objectives: |
|
Readings: | Lesson 6 online materials |
Assignments: |
|
Date: | Week 7 |
---|---|
Objectives: |
|
Readings: | Lesson 7 online materials |
Assignments: |
|
Date: | Week 8 |
---|---|
Objectives: |
|
Readings: |
|
Assignments: |
|
Date: | Week 9 |
---|---|
Objectives: |
|
Readings: | Lesson 9 online materials |
Assignments: |
|
Date: | Week 10 |
---|---|
Objective: |
|
Readings: | Lesson 10 online materials |
Assignments: |
|