Reviewing student-collected data

[Kylie]

A great way to get comfortable working with data, or to answer questions and solve problems with your class, is to collect and analyze your own data. Yet in the classroom, you run the risk of students submitting invalid data - either funny and inappropriate, or not aligned with the project's standards - that you don't want shared with the class. Ensure shared data is data you want your students seeing by reviewing it before it is visible to the class. 

Spoiler: You'll find all the details and a working example in my "how-to" guide StoryMap, Reviewing student-collected data.

Adding a review step is an involved process, requiring you to use a combination of data techniques and apps to create the survey, layers, maps, and apps. If you are comfortable working in ArcGIS Online, you've got this! Not only have I created a guide for you to follow to set up a review process for your own projects, it also includes a working example that you can try out to get familiar with the pieces you need to create.

The workflow

At a high-level, the guide will take you through trying and building the review workflow, which has three steps:

1. Students collect data through a survey.
   The survey is configured to mark all data as submitted, using a review status attribute field that's hidden from the survey.
   
2. Teachers and other designated individuals review the submitted data.
   They mark each entry as approved or rejected by updating the review status attribute.
   
3. Students use the approved data to answer questions and solve problems.
   How and where they use it depends on what they need to do - you'll configure an app that meets their needs but is restricted to the approved data.
   

Try it out and see how to set it up

Ready to try it out yourself? Jump into the Reviewing student-collected data StoryMap where you can try out the working demo as well as learn how to set up a review process for your own data collection project.

Questions? Leave a comment!

This is an update to the workflow shared in May 2022. While that review workflow still works, this has a few advantages:

1. Using Survey123 to add a review status field saves you from editing the fields in the layer. 
2. Using new Instant Apps simplifies what you need to create to support the review process.