Summary and Schedule
Designing and building your own geospatial teaching module as a Carpentries-style lesson (Markdown basics, creating a lesson repository from the Workbench template, working with GitHub Desktop, and adding episodes), with additional readings on data curation, FAIR data, metadata and data sharing.
This module was taught as part of the Purdue-NSF GIS Cybertraining for the Social Sciences Workshop, a two-day workshop held at Purdue University in 2026 (Day 2, Putting it all Together, for all participants). See the Workshop 2026 page for the full program.
It is part of Enabling the Geospatial Turn in the Social Sciences, a set of training modules developed at Purdue University with support from the National Science Foundation.
| Setup Instructions | Download files required for the lesson | |
| Duration: 00h 00m | 1. Building Your Own Carpentries Lesson |
What is Markdown and how do I use it to write lesson content? How do I create a Carpentries-style lesson website using the Workbench template? How do I add and organize episodes in my lesson? How do I work on my lesson locally using GitHub Desktop? |
| Duration: 01h 15m | 2. Additional Readings |
What is data curation and why does it matter for research? What practical steps can I take to keep my data organized and reusable? What are the FAIR principles? How do I publish and share research data at scale? |
| Duration: 01h 55m | Finish |
The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.
Day 2 Schedule
| Time | Session | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 8:30 AM | Breakfast | WALC 2051 |
| 9:00 AM | Welcome and Day 2 introduction | WALC 2127 |
| 9:15 AM | Teaching with Geospatial Brainstorming Session | Small group exercise: outline a new geospatial element, exercise, or project for your own class or lab. Prompts provided to guide you. |
| 10:00 AM | Group sharing and feedback | Present your ideas, get input from the group |
| 10:30 AM | Coffee break | WALC 2124 |
| 10:45 AM | Customizing Carpentries Modules for Classroom Use | Markdown basics, tutorial construction, and hands-on module building. On your own: read more about data sharing platforms, FAIR data standards, and metadata practices. |
| 12:00 PM | Closing discussion | Preview of 2027 module development workshop |
| 12:30 PM | Box lunch provided | WALC 2124 |
What You Need for Day 2
Day 2 focuses on designing and building your own teaching modules. The requirements are lighter than Day 1: no GIS software or data accounts needed.
Software
- GitHub Desktop: for cloning and pushing lesson repositories without using the command line → Download here
- A text editor: for editing Markdown files locally. Any of the following will work:
Accounts
- GitHub: you will create a lesson repository and host it on GitHub Pages → Sign up here if you do not have an account
Preparation
- Morning session (9:15 AM): Think about a course, lab, or project you teach (or plan to teach) that could benefit from a geospatial component. You will work in small groups to outline a module, so having a specific class in mind will help.
- Afternoon session (10:45 AM): If you are new to Markdown, a quick glance at markdownguide.org/basic-syntax beforehand is helpful but not required: we will cover the basics during the session.