Mobile Data Collection Using Open Data Kit & KOBO Collect Training

For a long time, data collection has been done using pen and paper, making it a painstaking and very expensive effort to collect data. In the age of smartphones, mobile-based data collection technologies especially ODK have greatly improved the conduct of surveys and assessments.

This 5-day Mobile data collection course is designed to introduce to participants the free and opensource ODK set of tools to enable them author, field, and manage mobile data collection solutions.

This course is designed for researchers, statisticians, field engineers, data collection experts, and organizations that would like to digitize their data collection processes.

This course seeks to offer a practical understanding of the Open Data Kit (ODK), and how to use it to collect data using Android devices.

• Create a questionnaire forms using  three different applications
• Manage the aggregate central server in terms of users, rights, form uploads/downloads, filters and exports
• Read, modify and/or debug a form in its XML format
• Download, use and set the parameters of ODK and Kobo collect for optimal use
• Incorporate advanced form features such as picture questions, cascading, repeat groups, multilingualism, calculated variables, photo and sound variables, and graphic annotation
• Export and analyze responses using different platforms.

Course Outline

1. Introduction to mobile data collection
2. Preparing the mobile phone for data collection
3. Survey Authoring
4. Introduction to ODK / KOBO collect survey authoring.
5. Question Types
6. Form structure
7. Hosting and Exporting survey data
8. Introduction to the server-side component of ODK
9. Hosting Survey Data
10. Downloading data
11. Analysis
12. Course Summary