This course contains online and onsite components with a strong emphasis placed on practical exercises, group work, and social interaction via an online forum within this elearning platform.

The official language of the course is English. Support for other languages is often available (particularly French, Spanish and Russian). 

To make best use of the activities around this workshop, the participants should possess the following skills and knowledge:

• Basic skills in computer and internet use, and, in particular, in the use of spreadsheets.
• Basic knowledge about geography and biodiversity informatics: geography and mapping concepts, basic taxonomy and nomenclature rules.
• Willingness to disseminate the knowledge learned in the workshop with partners and collaborators in your project by adapting the biodiversity data mobilization training materials to specific contexts and languages while maintaining their instructional value.
• A good command of English. While efforts are made to provide materials in other languages, instruction will be in English.

Foundations

• Receive introductions to GBIF and associated communities.
• Learn key concepts of biodiversity informatics, particular to biodiversity digital data management.
• Receive an introduction to the Darwin Core Standard and its components.

Planning

• Learn to understand the different stages for planning a mobilization project and how to adapt stages to a specific project.

Data Capture

• Learn to identify the types of data and how to best capture relevant information using best practices, existing softwares, tools and techniques.

Management

• Learn data quality concepts and receive an introduction to tools used for standardizing data, validating data, and cleaning data.

Publishing

• Learn the process of making biodiversity data freely available online, also known as data publishing, utilizing GBIF’s Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT).
• Learn about 

• Develop a data mobilization strategy customized to a given institutional framework.
• Apply a model to build a data mobilization strategy and the associated mobilization protocols.
• Evaluate a data mobilization strategy to identify potential gaps, inefficiencies and pitfalls.
• Apply a data capture protocol to produce digital biodiversity data from analogue sources.
• Use software tools designed to facilitate biodiversity data capture.
• Apply data cleaning protocols to evaluate and increase the fitness for use of a biodiversity dataset.
• Use software tools to evaluate the fitness-for-use of a biodiversity dataset
• Use software tools designed for (biodiversity) data cleaning.
• Apply a biodiversity data publishing mechanism.
• Define the publishable data types and subtypes (if any) for a biodiversity dataset.
• Use the GBIF IPT to publish biodiversity datasets using the appropriate extensions.
• Capacitate others in the planning, capture, management and publishing of biodiversity data.

Upon successful completion of the course and successful assessment of assignments (by trainers and mentors), participants have the opportunity to receive an official certification in the form of a Mozilla Open Badge.

Participants are required to submit Use Case 2 and Use Case 3 and each Use Case is scored against the educational rubrics  (EN, FR, SP, PT, RU) for the course. 

Course design and instruction

This course was developed by experts within the biodiversity informatics community. The following individuals are recognized for their significant contributions to the course design, materials and instruction:

• Nestor Beltran
• Katia Cezón
• Alberto Gonzalez Talavan
• Sharon Grant
• Marie-Elise Lecoq
• Sophie Pamerlon
• Nicolas Noé
• Mélianie Raymond
• Laura Russell
• John Wieczorek
• Paula Zermoglio

Special credit to Arthur Chapman for the reuse of his materials on Data Quality.

Resource support

• Belgium Biodiversity Platform
• GBIF France
• GBIF Spain

Elearning platform

The hosting for this eLearning space is kindly provided by GBIF Spain , which is sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and managed by the Spanish National Research Council - CSIC through its Royal Botanical Garden - CSIC

Tranlations

The following individuals are credited with the translations for the matierals:

French

Spanish

Russian

Portuguese

The success of this course depends heavily on the support provided to participants from GBIF's network of capacity enhancement mentors. Visit the GBIF page on capacity enhancement mentoring to read more about these individuals and their contributions.