Miss. S. Sajeevini

The action plan seeks to increase university students' awareness of open-source GIS (OSM) and its benefits, with the goal of producing more qualified mappers. The idea is to include OSM into the geography curriculum, especially in Sri Lanka, where students confront access and resource issues. Middle-class students in Sri Lanka frequently lack computers and continuous internet connectivity, making it harder for them to study and teach OSM. By introducing open-source GIS in geography departments and offering courses on technologies like GIS and OSM, the strategy intends to make university students more efficient mappers. The intention, as a regional ambassador for Asia, is to integrate OSM into the co-curriculum at four colleges in Sri Lanka. The presentation will go through the benefits and engage additional Students. The main reason I am proposing this action plan is that the students at the university should get a clear understanding of OSM and produce more competent mappers. That is, the purpose of my action plan is that students should get a complete understanding of OSM, its benefits, and how to use it. I intend to put forward suggestions to make it a curriculum in the field of geography, especially in our region. In particular, the main reason for me to propose this project is the challenges and obstacles that I faced in our region to acquire knowledge about OSM while I was pursuing my bachelor's degree at my university. That means I didn't get the facilities or opportunities to learn it fully at our university in the beginning. I didn't even have a laptop when I started to learn OSM thoroughly. Especially in Sri Lanka, in my region, the situation of students with various degrees is still the same. We got knowledge about OSM in a thirty-minute Zoom app through the lecturer, Mr. Sudhakaran sir. After that, the websites and participation in the OSM events were the only ways to gain complete knowledge. Therefore, even if various students are interested in learning about OSM, there are not enough resources to learn and teach it. For example, in Sri Lanka, 100–80 percent of the university students are from middle-class families, and not all of them have laptops, even though they are interested in learning. Similarly, students' living places do not have consistent internet, and students could not afford the high cost of internet. If this is a course in a university where students are taught at a specific time, they can use the computer facilities available in the university. Internet facilities can be used. And all students will have an engaging and enthusiastic opportunity. Currently, even though workshops are being held in international communities, only 30 percent of students are regularly involved in them. So the aim of my action plan is to make the university students have a thorough knowledge of this OSM and make them more efficient mappers. So, if these Open-Source GIS in the geography department in universities are implemented as a process and a course on technologies including GIS and OSM, it can bring complete awareness to all the geography students, and various degree opportunities will be available to the talented students. Therefore, as the initial phase of this, as a regional ambassador for Asia, there are currently four YouthMappers chapters in Sri Lanka. Therefore, I intend to take steps to put forward recommendations for incorporating OSM into the co-curriculum at those four universities. So, through my presentation, I would like to present on various topics, such as the benefits and how to involve students more in OSM.