If you have ever administered or collected data for a project in Collect Earth Online, you may have found yourself wanting one place to easily find information, details, and links specific to the project you are working on. Picture this: you are working on a difficult plot, and want to check the interpretation key. What was that link again? Was it in an email, or maybe a chat thread?
A new Learning Material feature allows project administrators to collect all that information in one handy location! Administrators can use this feature to provide users with quick tips for interpretation, more detailed instructions, and links to external websites and files.
The pop-up window is easily accessible to users in the External Tools section of the Data Collection interface by pressing the Interpretation Instructions button.
Collect Earth Online now supports a Learning Material field in the Project Wizard. Administrators can easily add Learning Materials to their projects in the Project Wizard interface, under General information about the project.
The Learning Materials feature supports basic markdown. For example, the following text can be added to the learning materials field:
Input your interpretation instructions for a project here. Limited markdown text is accepted, including **bold** and *italics*.
Unordered lists can be added:
Along with ordered lists:
You can also create external links to [websites](collect.earth) or .pdf files that contain additional information, images, etc.
The text appears as follows to data interpreters when the push the Interpretation Instructions button in the Data Collection interface.
You can always preview the Learning Material by using the “View Interpretation Instructions” button in the Project Details pane.
This feature can be implemented in existing projects by editing the project and adding text to the Learning Materials text box.
We hope this new feature will make your data collection in Collect Earth Online easier and more organized!
CEO would like to thank its ongoing funders FAO, NASA–USAID SERVIR, and SilvaCarbon, a US government program. Thanks also to CEO’s technology partners: Norway’s International Climate & Forests Initiative for funding open high-resolution data availability; Planet for providing high-resolution imagery; and the Google Earth Engine team for creating a platform for Earth science data and analysis.
Collect Earth Online is working constantly to improve the user experience, and your feedback is invaluable. If you have ideas to share, please write to support@collect.earth.
Thank you!
