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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.

This intensive workshop is split into two online chats and two 1-hour sessions. Participants will first learn to collect and process geospatial data from historical sources and process it using geographical information systems from Google Earth to QGIS.

The first online session introduces research techniques for collecting, arranging and mapping geospatial data from historical sources, and is taught by Dr Oliver Dunn. His session is split into two parts: Part A will introduce both online sessions by showing some of our own research that makes use of Google Earth, 3D Maps in Excel, and historical GIS. In Part B you will be asked to locate a set of Scotland’s historical lighthouses on historical maps online and map their location and other attributes in Google earth and 3D Maps.

The second online session introduces students to mapping humanities data using Q-GIS which is a free GIS (Geographical Information System) software platform. Course participants will need to download and install QGIS on their laptops before 5th of June. On the 1st of June there will be further details concerning downloading QGIS, a chat forum where we can discuss why you might wish to use GIS, and whether GIS is the right choice for you, and a release of course teaching materials. On 5 June you will be taken through the map creation process step-by-step. This session will be taught by Max Satchell.