Empowering Field Research: Open Data Kit (ODK) Workshop for Digital Field Surveys

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Please note this workshop has limited spaces and we request a pre course questionnaire is completed.

This Methods Workshop welcomes participants who are interested in acquiring skills related to Open Data Kit (ODK), a tool that facilitates the implementation of low-cost digital recording for field surveys. ODK is an open-source data collection platform, that can be used on mobile devices, offering a wide range of features for the development of customised digital survey forms. It allows users to collect geotagged photos, sketches, location coordinates, load pre-existing data, implement skipping logics, write questionnaires in multiple languages and more.

These forms are made using XLSForm standards which offers an easy to understand and simple way of authoring forms using Excel. ODK users can also collect data offline and send it to server when a good internet connection is available, allowing data to still be collected in areas of low internet connectivity. The collected data is submitted to the server from where it can be downloaded for analysis or further processing. In this workshop, you will be able to learn end-to-end ODK form development, deployment, setting up on a mobile device and analysing collected data. With these skills, you will then be able to design your own personalised field data collection system as per your research/project requirements.

Note: ODK Collect (mobile application) is currently only available for android devices. However, the forms can also be accessed using Enketo web forms in a browser on a laptop or on a mobile device e.g., iOS. Enketo web forms and ODK Collect are expected to have different appearance for survey forms as these are developed and maintained by different teams.

If you are interested in attending this course, please fill in the application form. We will prioritise places for students and staff in the schools of Arts & Humanities, Humanities & Social Sciences, libraries and museums. However, all are welcome to apply.

It is recommended that participants bring a laptop, we will be mainly using Excel, QGIS and a web-browser on the laptop. An android phone/tablet if available, with latest version of ‘ODK Collect’ app installed from Google Play Store.

Number of sessions: 1

Junaid is a Geoinformatics Engineer with a Bachelor’s degree (2015) from the National University of Sciences & Technology, Pakistan and Master’s degree (2019) from the Institute of Space Technology, Pakistan.

Starting a professional career in 2015, Junaid has worked on spatial datasets from different application areas including urban planning, vehicle tracking, rescue services, archaeology, and heritage and more. In his first professional assignment, he worked on the spatial planning of two cities in Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan. Later, joining Pakistan’s first digital mapping and location-based services platform as the data lead, here they worked to materialise a data development and management system using an open-source database, capable of handling the largest spatial dataset of Pakistan.

Bringing on-board rich industrial knowledge, Junaid is currently working as the Database Manager for Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA) project, where he is working on the design and deployment of Arches open-source database, developing field data collection system using ODK and coding data ETL pipelines.