Fostering user-driven learning communities in-person and virtually: Examples from Earth Engine meetups
In today’s rapidly developing earth observation ecosystem, new data sources, software and platforms mean that students and practitioners have to continually learn how to use them. Google Earth Engine is one such geospatial cloud-based platform which has attracted much user interest for research, nonprofit and commercial applications. However, users may have to first learn how to code in JavaScript or Python, as well as learn how to modify familiar workflows for a client-server and parallel computing paradigm. Learning communities where users share knowledge, mentor each other and help each other troubleshoot are useful for enabling learning-while-doing, especially when a steep learning curve is involved.
This poster introduces two examples of fostering user-led learning communities around Earth Engine. The first example is an in-person user group at Yale University called EE@Yale (https://eeyale.github.io), which consisted of weekly to biweekly meetups where Earth Engine users from different departments shared talks and helped each other with learning how to use the platform. For example, some sessions at EE@Yale were focused on new developments in Earth Engine such as the ability to require script modules and create applications with a user interface. After the talks, users were able to try out these new features together while troubleshooting as a group. These meetups ran between 2017 and 2020, moving into a virtual format in 2020.
The second example is a series of Earth Engine Virtual Meetups (https://sabrinaszeto.com/earth-engine-user-meetup-calendar) held during the pandemic which saw an international group of users come together for an hour once a month for user-led talks and open knowledge sharing. After the guest speaker has shared their presentation, an open question-and-answer session is facilitated by the moderator. The sessions are also livestreamed, recorded and uploaded to a YouTube channel. The virtual meetups have between 10 and 100 attendees each time and have also played a role in allowing for networking and sharing work during the pandemic.
In addition to introducing these two learning communities and how they were formed, this poster will also share best practices and lessons learned regarding stakeholder engagement and co-creation, motivating users and fostering a culture of learning from each other. Several templates for meetup events will also be described, including lightning talks (short talks that last up to 5 minutes), co-working sessions, mini-hackathons as well as the sessions with a more traditional “lecture followed by question and answer” format. A behind-the-scenes look at useful tools and resources such as graphic design software and polling websites will also be shared. The lessons learned from these user communities can be applied to facilitating working groups or meetups around other earth observation tools or data.
