Miljövetenskap GR (A), Introduktion till Geografiska informationssystem (GIS)

The program starts with a roll call day, which is preliminary set to the 20th of January at 13:15 in room given on timeedit on Campus Östersund or via zoom link. The roll call has compulsory attendance. Once the schedule is finalized I will send out an email to all participants of the course with the specified date and place. 

Schedule

Four weeks before the start of the course, when you have created you MiunID (student account), you will see your schedule.
Please note that the schedule is updated until the start of the course and there may be changes thereafter if something unforeseen occurs.

Can't find the schedule?

Then you will receive the schedule closer to the start of the course from your teacher or course coordinator.

Education information

The course will have the following setup: 

The first session is a lecture will contain an introduction round and will provide some needed geographical and cartographical background. The remainder of the course will be a mixture of lectures and exercises where in blocks of ca 30 min we will swap between lectures providing content and concepts and exercises where you will use the concepts and will perform tasks in QGIS. So even if in timeedit you find that the session is a lecture that means that it contains lecture elements but also exercises. If it is stated that it is a seminar, this will be a possibility for you to ask questions and the teacher can either explain parts that were not clear or go through the exercises if needed. 

The course is split into a few obligatory campus sessions and online sessions. For the campus sessions, campus students are expected to attend on site in Östersund, while the distance students attend via zoom. 

Most sessions are distance sessions, if there is an expressed wish, I can arrange for a room for the campus students to meet during this sessions, this will be discussed in the first session. 

The first half of the course will be mainly introduction of concepts and small exercises and the second half will be a larger project. During the first half of the course you are required to hand it a weekly report of the exercises. This weekly report is both a way to evaluate your work but most of all it is meant for you to generate a script for your own use at a later time when you are using GIS in a real work setting after the course.

 

Before the first session please make sure that you fulfill the technical requirements for the GIS course:

You need

A laptop with QGIS installed. The laptop should have at least 8 GB RAM (better 16) and have at

1. A laptop with QGIS installed. (the version does not really matter, I suggest the latest LTS)
2. The laptop should have at least 8 GB RAM (better 16) and
3. have at least 10 GB free space for course files.
4. You need a sufficiently fast internet connection and since you need to download large files I suggest broadband and no GB limit

QGIS is an open source program, hence there are no fees connected with installing the program.
However, depending on your operation system there might be some steps required to get it working.

Here is a tutorial on how to install it on a Windows computer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-YHaFNHXmI

Here is a tutorial on how to install it on a Mac:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_qrMS0XQCQ

If you use a university computer or one from your employer you might get the access rights to be allowed to install it, so please do this a while before the course starts so that you make sure everything is set up in the first lecture.

On Linux based systems you simply type :

sudo apt install qgis

in the command line and wait for it to be installed.

We will be using a number of plugins within this course. They should be installable without special
user rights.

The release date is not as important since we are only using very basic features. I would install the
latest LTS (long term support) version which is 3.40.

We will also use a spreadsheet program like Excel (or Calc) to import and export data and a
presentation program like Powerpoint (or Impress) to show how to use this in a presentation

We will be using Canvas as  a course platform in combination with Teams since Canvas does not have enough space for the large files that we are working with. 

This course is not a literature or evening course. The lectures/seminars are to be attended and the lectures will not be recorded only in exceptional cases. The setup is that for most of the time there is a small amount of theory and directly afterwards you are using it in the exercises and get feedback, hence it is not suitable for only looking at it in the evening. 

This is what you need to do as a new student

There are several things you need to do as a new student in order to start your studies. If you are a distance student with campus lectures, you need to familiarize yourself with both checklists. 

Follow the checklist carefully!  The checklists are in Swedish

Checklist distance student

Contact us

If you have any questions or concerns, you are more than welcome to contact us via kontakt@miun.se or by phone 010-142 80 00 at 08.00–16.00.

I look forward to meet you in the course!
If you have specific questions about the course , please feel free to contact me at:

veiko.lehsten@miun.se

Welcome!

Best regards

veiko.lehsten@miun.se

Course manager