Progress at November 2022#

There is no formal rquirement for a progress report in November 2022 since the project is not applying for renewed funding.

A final project report will be prepared for early summer 2023, and this Jupyter Book will constitutes the complete package.

This page summarize progress between roughly Dec 2021 and Nov 2022.

1) Infrastructure development#

The UBC-hosted learnign hub at open.jupyter.ubc.ca was implemented for Sept 1st by UBC’s Center for Teaching and Learning Technology (CTLT). See the Jupyter Open home page for details of facilities.

Fall 2022: In the Department of EOAS, courses eosc211 and eosc442 piloted usage of the “standard” JupyterLab environment. Other groups at UBC also are using the facility. It was mainly reliable for small (fewer than ~30 students) courses but there were latency and “hanging” difficulties for larger courses. Some quotes derived from communications with colleagues?

“… we have a few issues with some node slowdowns … Students are finding the kernels are being very, very slow or failing connection entirely. It seems to be fine when we have < 50 connecting, but above that number we start hitting issues.”

and

“quote to come”

Late 2022 through summer 2023: We expect to increase communication among users (instructors of courses using the hub) and suppliers (CTLT). With attention to communications and discussions, it should be feasible to address concerns about the stability / accessibility of open source computing to support the various undergraduate courses across campus. Many faculty, students and staff have collectively made significant investments of time and funding to develop new educational approaches, and it’s really important that we get this right.

2) Complete course transformations#

EOSC 211 (~100 students): See our EOSC211 page for details. Project components have include converting everything from MatLab to Python (2020-2021), incorporating autograding using nbGrader, establishing workflows suitable for managing ~120 students, maintaining content, assignments and labs using GitHub, Jupyter books, or the course’s Canvas learning management system website, and piloting UBC’s new open Jupyter Hub (including workarounds when it fails to meet students’ needs).

The hubs have been problematic, and it has been helpful to teach students to set up their own laptops so they can run Jupyter notebooks without the hubs. For much of the course, roughly a third of the enrolled students used their own computers for most of the time. More details our EOSC211 page.

DSCI 100 (68 students) This is one of 5 sections of the course in term 2. Enrolment was restricted for this offering of the new Pyhon-based version.) See our DSCI 100 page for details. This is a complete adaptation of this R-based course to Python, including adapting the custom textbook, all worksheets, assignments and their autograding capabilities, and lecture materials.

EOSC 442 (up to 20 students) All computing labs were converted from MatLab to Python and piloted by the teaching assistant who runs those labs - Ben O’Connor. See our EOSC 442 page for details.

EOSC 471 (up to 40 students) Between January and April 2023, all computing labs will be converted from MatLab to Python. The extent to which this can be completed depends on how much these activities depend on sophisticated MatLab codes. See our EOSC 471 page for details.

3) Development of specific data-oriented interactive learning resources#

NOTE: See our dashboards page for dashboard apps that were developed and implemented in the following courses during this project period.

ENVR 300 (~50 students): Several dashboards successfully piloted in yr1 are being refined for use in winter of 2023, and others are being considered. See the ENVR 300 page for details.

EOSC 340 (~110 students): two new sophisticated dashboard apps were completed and will be tested in the January-April term. These two apps draw upon the CMIP6 data sets to help students gain familiarity with the comparison of climate models. Question banks have been prepared in the last few terms using the PrairieLearn system. See the EOSC 340 page for details.

EOSC 429: Dashboard apps are being prepared for students to explore specific concepts in groundwater contamination. To be piloted between January and April 2023. See the EOSC 429 page for details.

EOSC 471: Discussions about whether to build dashboard apps resulted in running an existing activity with the option of using spreadsheets or Jupyter Notebooks provided by new professor Hal Bradbury. No further OCESE resources were used for this course. See the EOSC 471 page for details.

4) Faculty Pro-D#

Faculty who have engaged with the OCESE project during course transformations or introduction of resources.

  • Lindsey Heagey (DSCI 100, EOSC 350, and project coordination)

  • Catherine Johnson (EOSC 211)

  • Michael Lipsen (EOAS 442)

  • Ben O’Connor (TA for EOSC 442)

  • Ali Ameli (EOSC 325)

  • Lucy Porrit (EOSC 323)

  • Phil Austin (EOSC 340, ATSC 301)

  • Roger Beckie (EOSC 429)

  • Tara Ivanochko (ENVR 300, project coordination)

  • Kristin Orians (EOSC 372, EOSC 373)

  • Susan Allen (EOSC 471)