OCESE - Open-source Computing for Earth Science Education#

The OCESE project (May 2020 through Apr 2023) aims to transform undergraduate quantitative teaching and learning in UBC’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science (EOAS) using open source tools including:

  • Python as the principal and persistant programing language for students;

  • Jupyter notebooks for entry-level or advanced courses requiring writing or modifying code;

  • use of executable books (like the one you are reading here) to deliver static content (textbooks) or dynamic materials in the form of Jupyter notebooks;

  • interactive dashboards for exploring concepts and data sets, programed using Python and a consistent interactive library (Plotly Dash);

  • use of emerging automatic assessment practices (nbgrader, a Jupyter Notebook plugin, Prairielearn, and others);

  • use of GitHub as a collaborative means of collaborating on development of Open Source content, tools and logistics.

Note that this documentation package is NOT about the EOAS Department’s QuEST Project (Quantitative Earth Sciences Transformation). See https://blogs.ubc.ca/eoasquest/ for those details.

Formal title: Embedding Open-source Computational Tools into the Quantitative Earth Science Specializations

Project funding: The UBC Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund, and internal support from the Department - EOAS.

Source: This website’s repository contains Markdown content that is converted to HTML by Jupyter Books and pushed for online display using ghp-import.

Website Organization: Sections are somewhat inspired by a documentation framework described at Divio.

  • “PROJECT & OUTCOMES” contains explanations of project goals and summaries of outcomes and deliverables.

  • “HOW-TO GUIDES” includes succinct summaries of tools and techniques to help contributors, instructors and students.

  • “TUTORIALS” contain more thorough learning resources for students or instructors.

  • “REFERENCES” are lists of pointers, links and key sources.

OCESE Project Timeline as of spring 2022.

Acknowledgements#

Many thanks for financial support provided by UBC Vancouver students via the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund, and the UBC Work Learn Program for helping employ student contributors. (For details about UBC’s work learn program, see the page for students or the page for faculty.)

Also much appreciated are the dedication & professionalism of the EOAS Department’s computing staff, as well as support related to (a) teaching and learning and (b) development of open Jupyter Hubs, both from the Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology.

This book is powered by JupyterBook and aims to be …

  • free and open (permissive license, sources and content available through github)

  • interactive where applicable (integration with JupyterHub and Binder will allow readers to run and modify code examples)

  • a living document during the OCESE project; i.e.content will continue to evolve, and collaboration is welcome.

ocese outcomes by type

Licensing for all pages in this site: Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US)
© Francis Jones, Dec. 2023, UBC Dep’t Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences.

Website update Feb. 1, 2024.