Capacity Development Working Group

The GODAN Capacity Development Working Group uses a customised capacity building plan to foster engagement among members, drawing on lessons identified through a number of different mappings and assessments developed in conjunction with the membership. The Working Group (WG) provides a platform for long-term action and was designed to withstand scaling up, in terms of both capacity development materials and assessments. The WG was initiated during the September 2016 GODAN Summit. GODAN Capacity Development WG works in close synergy with other key stakeholders in the field, such as the Group on Earth Observations(GEO), The International Council for Science (CODATA), the Research Data Alliance and the United Nations FAO, among other global initiatives and organisations.

The main objectives of this working group include:

• Promoting open data knowledge and increasing awareness of ongoing open data initiatives, innovations and good practices;
• Advocating for collaborative efforts in agriculture and nutrition open data initiatives, through knowledge sharing among capacity development activities;
• Promoting sharing of information, good practices, and lessons learned that can enable the use of open data. Promote capacity development and diversity of open data users to achieve more effective accessibility, use, engagement and understanding of open data

Webinars

Since March 2017, CTA and partners through the GODAN Action project have been delivering monthly Webinars as one of the set objectives of the Capacity Development WG. For further information, or to view previous Webinars click here. 

The Open Data Management in Agriculture and Nutrition online course, and resources provided by GODAN Action, may be of use to a range of stakeholders, including: policy makers, ICT staff, communications officers, librarians and curators, administrators and project managers, researchers and scientists, and academics in the fields of agriculture, nutrition, weather, climate and land data.

It consists of five units and includes 18 lessons in total. It is completely flexible, and up to the participants how they schedule their time to go through the course materials.

Unit 1: Open Data Principles
More Details, lecture slides etc at  http://aims.fao.org/online-courses/open-data-management-agriculture-and-nutrition/unit1

Unit 2: Using Open Data
More Details, lecture slides etc at  http://aims.fao.org/online-courses/open-data-management-agriculture-and-nutrition/unit2

Unit 3: Making Data Open
More Details, lecture slides etc at http://aims.fao.org/online-courses/open-data-management-agriculture-and-nutrition/unit3

Unit 4: Sharing Open Data
More Details, lecture slides etc at http://aims.fao.org/online-courses/open-data-management-agriculture-and-nutrition/unit4

Unit 5: Intellectual Property and Copyright
More Details, lecture slides etc at  http://aims.fao.org/online-courses/open-data-management-agriculture-and-nutrition/unit5

You can find the full published curriculum by clicking here

FOSS4G GeoAcademy Curriculum lectures and labs are also useful visual resources for learning more about geodata. They are maintained by the Spatial{Query}Lab and available for download on their Web site. The lectures focus on a vendor agnostic set of theories and principles.

These lectures and labs are freely available for you to use, having been released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. The courses are aligned to the Geospatial Technology Competency Model and all labs focus on the use of Free and Open Source GIS Software (FOSS4G). The labs are also all available on GitHub.

The following courses on geographic information services are available to view:

• GST 101 – Introduction to Geospatial Technology (QGIS)
• GST 102 – Spatial Analysis (QGIS)
• GST 103 – Data Acquisition and Management (QGIS)
• GST 104 – Cartographic Design (QGIS and Inkscape)
• GST 105 – Introduction to Remote Sensing (QGIS and GRASS)

All details and courses available: http://spatialquerylab.com/foss4g-academy-curriculum/