Introducing Agroecology - Extension Training Materials

This is a forkable set of teaching materials for teaching practitioners the basics of agroecology through the introduction of foundational concepts and interactive learning activities.

The initial materials are presented primarily for a 1.5 day in-service training sponsored by UF/IFAS Extension, though the materials should also be organized for self-guided learning.

Helpful information is available regarding the structure and function of the course and website materials for customized development and delivery of the course. We recognize the original development of this website format by @ethanwhite, @brymz, and others.

Where is everything

Core teaching materials are stored in exercises/, lectures/, and materials/.

Class specific materials are stored in the syllabus, schedule and assignments/.

Most of the other folders and files support creating the course website using Jekyll.

Using Jekyll to build your own course website

Simple setup

The website is setup to be easy to run automatically through GitHub:

1. Fork or import the repository to https://github.com/yourusername/introducing-agroecology.
2. Update # Setup information in _config.yml in the main directory for proper site rendering.
   • You must push this change to your repository to build and browse your forked version.
   • In a few minutes you should be able to see the site at: https://yourusername.github.io/introducing-agroecology/
3. Edit any of the markdown (.md) files
4. Commit and push the changes
   • The changes should now be reflected on the website
5. If you want to use a custom domain name instead of github.io, follow GitHub's instructions for setting up a custom domain.

If you have any problems please let us know and we'll be happy to help.

Previewing changes locally

If you want to view your changes locally, before pushing them to the live website, you'll need to setup Jekyll locally. GitHub provides a good introduction on how to do this.

If you have Jekyll properly installed, you can then run

bundle exec jekyll serve --baseurl ''

from the command line and navigate to http://localhost:4000/ in your browser to preview the current state of the website.

Creating new pages

If you want to add new exercises, lecture notes, etc. you do this by creating a markdown file in the appropriate directory. Each markdown file needs to start with some information that tells Jekyll what the page is. This is done using something called YAML, and the standard YAML for a new exercise would look like this:

---
layout: exercise
topic: Topic group of exercise
title: Name of exercise
language: [R, Python, SQL]
---

This is placed at the very beginning of the markdown file and provides information on what kind of content it is (e.g., exercise, page, etc.), the title of the page, and what language it applies to.

The page should then be available at a url based on where the file is located and what the file name is. So if you created a new exercise in the exercises/ folder called my_awesome_exercise.md it would be located at:

Locally: http://localhost:4000/exercises/my_awesome_exercise

After pushing to GitHub: https://yourusername.github.io/introducing-agroecology/exercises/my_awesome_exercise

Acknowledgements

Development of this material is funded by UF/IFAS Extension through IST #31557, “What is Agroecology and how is it relevant to your Extension program?” and Hatch Project FLA-TRC-005661.