Goals and Contributors#

This is the front page of an ongoing project to transform teaching in the UBC Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science (EOAS) to use open source tools, particularly Jupyter notebooks organized as executable books.

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

Project Goals#

Specifically, this project aims to …#

  1. Enhance the exposure to, and learning of, quantitative Earth Science for all students taking EOAS courses.

  2. Increase the computational and numerical literacy of students pursuing EOAS degree specializations.

  3. Promote adoption of open source resources and teaching or learning practices.

  4. Develop & test affordable, sustainable cloud computing facilities

  5. Generate training materials and documentation based on lessons learned about taching and learning with the tools and tactics developed.

  6. Support the Faculty of Science minor in Data Science and especially the new first year Data Science course DSCI 100 developed by the Department of Statistics.

  7. Engage with and support new and existing faculty to help meet the first three project goals.

More generally …#

The Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences represent excellent learning contexts for students to develop applied quantitative, computational and data skills. To quote a 2019 report to the Faculty of Science,

“…current and future graduates need skills to organize, interact with, and extract meaning from data. [These skills] … are applicable to a wide and expanding range of career paths and will open future opportunities for UBC students, as well as contribute to a data-literate citizenry.”

This project (OCESE) is one of many initiatives responding to that report.

Using open source, cloud-based computing we aim to integrate computational and quantitative skills more comprehensively and consitently across our Department’s curriculum, incorporating real world examples and datasets into existing courses. New Jupyter notebook based modules and activities will be threaded throughout core courses in Geophysics, Atmospheric Sciences, Oceanography and Geological Engineering bridging traditional disciplinary boundaries.

This proposed curriculum transformation will happen alongside the QuEST project which is re-evaluating quantitative EOAS course offerings across disciplines. The end result will reposition the UBC Earth Science specializations as opportunities for quantitative and computational learning in a highly interdisciplinary domain.

Regarding precedent, courses that introduced opensource resources and practices prior to beginning the OCESE project (mainly ATSC 301 & EOSC 213 by introducing python & Jupyter notebooks and EOSC 350 by using interactive modelling and simulations in most of their learning activities) were improved largely by efforts of individual instructors and their teaching teams (especially TAs). These early initiatives provided important insights regarding what to expect when adapting or enhancing courses as planned by the OCESE original proposal.

Caveat#

This project’s proposal was developed during 2018-19, and funded between May 2020 - April 2023. That is a 5-year time span. We began work 2 months after the COVID pandemic dramatically changed the way teaching was delivered. Throughout the first 2 years, instructors and students were all working overtime to adapt their teaching and learning practices to the unexpected online learning environment. There was little time and energy to devote to transformative developments - UNLESS they directed supported online teaching and learning. Therefore, priorities changed and delivered outcomes reflect this shift in context from project concept to project execution.

Contributors#

Principles#

  • Tara Ivanochko: Project P.I. (TI at EOAS). Dr. Ivanochko has been Associate Head Undergraduate Affairs in EOAS; Director of the Environmental Science BSc Degree specialization, and is currently serving as Academic Director, UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI).

  • Phil Austin: Project instigator and chief developer. (PA at EOAS and on GitHub). Dr. Austin has transformed three courses to use python and Jupyter notebooks and is the liaison between this proposal and UBC’s other related data science education projects. He is also engaged with the Faculty of Science initiative to provide student computation support on the cloud and chair of the Infrastructure Sub-committee for the Faculty of Science Data Science Committee.

  • Francis Jones: Coordinator, admin and development. (FJ at EOAS and on GitHub). Mr. Jones has industry and research experience as a geophysicist, taught applied geophysics at UBC for 25 years, and has worked in the department as a geoscience education specialist for 16 years.

  • Lindsey Heagy: Geophysics / datascience professor with direct experience in tools and techniques, and with an ongoing stake as instructor for several courses we are working on. (LH at EOAS and on GitHub).

EOAS Department Contributors#

The following are, or will be involved in various capacities. All teach (or have taught) in the Department of EOAS, Faculty of Science, UBC.

Name

Title/Affiliation

Responsibilities/Roles

Tara Ivanochko

Assoc. Teaching Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Project P.I., instructor ENVR 300

Susan Allen

Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor, EOSC 471

Phil Austin

Assoc. Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Principle project developer, instructor EOSC 340, ATSC 301

Roger Beckie

Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 429

Michael Bostock

Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 354

Catherine Johnson

Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 211

Valentina Radic

Assoc. Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor ENVR 300

Stephanie Waterman

Assist. Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 112, 372

Lindsay Heagy

Assist. Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 350, DSCI 100, and opensource computing expertise.

Kristin Orians

Assoc. Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 372

Maite Maldonado

Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 372

Stuart Sutherland

Teaching Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 116, 425

Ali Ameli

Assist. Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 325

Rachel White

Assist. Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 340

Anais Orsi

Assist. Prof., Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 112

Lucy Porritt

Lecturer, Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 323

Louise Longridge

Lecturer, Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 116, 326

Reid Merrill

PhD student

Instructor EOSC 354

Joseph Capriottie

PostDoc

Instructor EOSC 350

Sam Anderson

PhD student

Instructor EOSC 410

Michael Lipsen

Lecturer, Fac. Sci., Dep’t EOAS

Instructor EOSC 422

Ben O’Connor

PhD student

Taught EOSC 422 computing labs

Also, from Dep’t Statistics, Tiffany Timbers and Trevor Campbell are principles in the DSCI 100 development project and were liaison for OCESE work related to generating a Python version of that course.

Student Contributors#

Most students were hired with support from the UBC WorkLearn program:

Name

Role

Responsibilities / duties

Carol Zhang

undergrad

programming question sets & Canvas interface

Jamie Byer

undergrad

programming dashboards

Danil Platonov

undergrad

programming early versions of server software

Benjamin Chang

undergrad

programming related to question sets & Canvas interface

Mara Colclough

undergrad

programming early versions of python resources including building and managing Canvas quizzes from Juypter.

Iddo Sadeh

undergrad

programming dashboards, Python conversion of EOSC 442, DSCI 100

Navya Dahiya

grad

supported DSCI 100 Python conversion

Wanying Ye

grad

supported DSCI 100 Python conversion

Zhiyong Wang

grad

supported DSCI 100 Python conversion

Andrew Loeppky

grad

supported EOSC 211 Python conversion

Hariharan Umashankar

grad

various programming, including dashboards

Jacob McFarlane

grad

work on advanced dashboard programming for EOSC 340

Yiki Su

grad

supported DSCI 100 Python conversion

Chris Rodell

grad

volunteer - supported conversion of EOSC 410

Francis Rossman

grad

supported EOSC 211 conversion, and dashboard programming