Thesis topic: oggm-edu - online educational platform about glaciers

[fmaussion]

Motivation

OGGM-Edu is a modern platform providing tools and materials for instructors who want to teach about glaciers at school, in workshops or at the university. It relies on three main complementary components:

1. Interactive apps, to illustrate glaciological processes with the help of interactive graphics on the web.
2. Graphics, open access images and graphics that can be used for lectures or presentations.
3. Interactive Notebooks, for students willing to run and develop their own experiments. The targeted audience are students at the undergrad or graduate level with some programming experience, or under the supervision of an instructor who can show them how to run the experiments.

In this thesis, the student will work on developing the platform further, with a strong emphasis on 3. Notebooks and the development of a educational python package.

Specific objectives

The focus will be hold on the development of a python interface (a package) adding a layer of abstraction on top of the core OGGM model. This layer of abstraction will use object oriented programming and documentation to facilitate the creation of educational notebooks.

The student will have to:

• design and develop the oggm-edu package from scratch
• write the online documentation
• write example notebooks demonstrating the use of the python package, targeting lecturers

The thesis

This educational topic is quite unusual for a master thesis. While it won't focus on the traditional formulation of "research questions", it won't make it less challenging (quite the opposite, I believe). In order to bring "scientific" content to the thesis, we will:

• have to read and develop thoughts about object oriented and API programming
• bring scientific elements in the form of surveys and/or textbook content about glaciers

Ideally, the traditional "thesis writing" will be replaced by:

• the writing of the website
• the (co-)writing of a scientific publication in geosciences communication. Examples papers: 1, 2, 3

Profile of the student

Excellent programming and written English skills (both are equally important). Strong interest for glaciers, programming and education. Willingness to try something "out-of-the-box".

[fmaussion]

Another paper for inspiration: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/98/8/bams-d-16-0121.1.xml