Week 9 — Metadata

Presentation Slides

• Tuesday — Spatial Metadata — What metadata is and why it matters; Metadata standards and styles; Reading metadata to judge whether data is fit for use

Press F for fullscreen and P for presenter view with speaker notes.

Materials: A brief metadata melodrama

In-Class Practice

• Tuesday — What I learned about metadata: write down a couple of things you learned today. Record your completion on Learning Suite. Activity guide

Hands-On Practice

Writing and Evaluating Metadata

This session has its own step-by-step guide: what you need, an overview, the click-by-click QGIS walkthrough, what to hand in, and the snags that usually come up.

Open the Week 9 hands-on guide →

Self-check quizzes — not graded; open them on a phone or laptop as often as you like:

• Would You Drink It? — What a dataset with no documentation costs you, and how to read a metadata record and decide whether to trust the data.

Lab Assignment

Lab 8 — Metadata

Due Saturday at 11:59 pm on Learning Suite.

Reading Quiz

This week's reading: GIS Fundamentals, Chapter 7 (Digital Data).

Quiz 7 — Metadata on Learning Suite: open book. Due Saturday at 11:59 pm. See Reading Quizzes.

Note

If you see a discrepancy between Learning Suite and this page, please let us know so we can rectify it.

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Version 2026.10.2 · Last updated October 15, 2026