EAOS111 Earth and Ocean Science Assignment Brief 2026 | University of Otago

EAOS111 Assignment Brief

Tittle : My Earth and Ocean World

Worth : 50 %

EAOS111 takes you on a whirlwind tour of a variety of topics in the Earth and ocean sciences. But how do these topics connect to your world?

This assignment is your chance to bridge that gap and discover how Earth and ocean science connects to your everyday life. Your goal is to explore how the concepts you’ve learned in EAOS111 relate to a place that holds personal significance for you, drawing on your own experiences and values to apply what you have learned to a real-world context.

You will create a visual presentation of what you have learned in the form of a
story on ArcGIS StoryMaps: an interactive and narrative digital map hosted on the ArcGIS Online platform. This digital map will be your canvas to showcase how EAOS111 topics manifest in your chosen location – think of it as a journey through your personal “Earth and Ocean World”.

Assignment Goals

1. Explore how Earth and ocean science topics relate to a place that holds personal significance for you and make explicit connections between the course content and your own life.
2. Independently collect and analyse data from ArcGIS Online web-maps,
   district/regional council databases, and the scientific literature.
3. Communicate your findings in an interactive and visually engaging Story Map.

What are Story Maps?

In this assignment you will use ArcGIS StoryMaps to tell your Earth and Ocean story. ArcGIS StoryMaps is a web-based application that allows users to create interactive, multimedia stories with maps, text, photos, and videos.

Maps allow us to understand how things are connected spatially, and visualise how geology, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami, topography, rivers, coastal features, and human activities are interwoven in a particular region. By exploring these spatial relationships, we gain a deeper understanding of Earth system connections.

Choosing Your Focus Area

This assignment asks you to explore a place that holds personal significance for you, or where your cultural identity is rooted.

What to consider when choosing your focus area:

• Choose a location that you are deeply familiar with. This is likely
  to be a place where you have lived for a substantial period.
• Scope: The area should be large enough to encompass a variety of
  Earth system reservoirs, but not so vast that you are unfamiliar with most of it.
• If your chosen place is inland, consider expanding your area to include part of the neighboring coast. Where do the rivers in your area meet the sea? If your area is very far from the coast you can add a separate coastal area to your story.

Examples of suitable focus areas:

• Your hometown and its surrounding natural landscapes.
• A specific suburb within a city you have lived in, and the nearby countryside or
  wilderness (avoid basing your entire area within an urban landscape).
• A specific region that holds deep cultural significance to your family or community, such as a traditional ancestral land, a sacred mountain or river valley.

Process

The key steps for completing this assignment are outlined below.

1. Read through this assignment brief thoroughly.
2. Ensure that you have access to ArcGIS Online
   (see ArcGIS Online section below).
3. Look at examples of stories made on ArcGIS StoryMaps: view the EAOS111 Pre-field trip Story Map and North Otago Virtual Field Trip story map, or browse example from the ArcGIS StoryMaps community.
4. Choose 3 topics to focus on from the Assignment Components section below.
5. Carry out research on these topics for your chosen area.
6. Write your story: we recommend having the text and multimedia elements of your story organised before you start putting content into ArcGIS StoryMaps builder.
7. Get started with your story: work through the
   Getting started with ArcGIS StoryMaps tutorial.
8. Make maps to add to your story: open the map viewer on ArcGIS Online and work through a tutorial to familiarise yourself with making maps:
   1. Get started creating maps tutorial
   2. Get started with ArcGIS Online tutorial – creating and sharing maps
9. Share/submit your story: when you publish your story, in the sharing settings choose My organization – this makes it accessible to other people at Otago.
   Copy the story link and submit the link to the MEOW Assignment under Activities on Aoroa.

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