chalkless / curriculum

Biodiversity Informatics Curriculum Interest Group

Biodiversity Informatics Curriculum Interest Group

Rationale

Informatics is becoming a more and more important approach within every field of science. Despite several major data sharing and linking initiatives and facilities for biodiversity data, biodiversity informatics (BDI) still lacks recognition as an independent methodological discipline providing the fundamental set of skills for students and researchers in biodiversity research. To establish this status, offering a biodiversity informatics curriculum as part of all levels of scientific education and related careers becomes essential.

Rather than training to use different tools, the BDI Curriculum Interest Group should lay basis for deeper understanding of the key principles of biodiversity informatics and synthesize the teaching curriculum for different target audiences and credit levels in the field.

For achieving these goals and enabling knowledge exchange about existing curricula and teaching activities, the BDIC groups will develop a framework and controlled vocabulary of curriculum modules.

Planned steps for collaboration

1. Draft a BDIC framework based on existing surveys, frameworks and curricula (in biodiversity informatics and related domains)
2. Publish a short communication paper about the draft framework with a link to a survey (using the framework draft)
3. Analyze the results, improve the framework and possibly organize workshops to test the ideas
4. Publish a full paper about the final version with use cases (demonstrate how the framework can be used) => Pensoft?
5. Develop a platform for collaboration and promotion of curricula described or developed with the framework (Github or other?)
6. Maintenance plan (how and when to review the created framework)

How to contribute

BDIC Interest Group will soon have a mailinglist, which will be used for announcements and caal for action. Actual discussion and development will take place here on Github. Folders for the framework and communication paper will be public shortly.