Explain how students should organize their GRASS database for the course

[petrasovaa]

In the first assignment, include some intro, e.g. like this (taken from forum):

I would recommend this folder structure to keep things organized, which you can use for the rest of the course:

1. Create directory 'grassdata' in GIS595_UAS (the name is up to you, but this is a convention, don't use spaces in there)

2. Unzip Lake_wheeler... location in there - important, sometimes Windows will unzip it in the way that you have it nested there (which is your case as I can see) - so avoid it.

So the folder structure will be GIS595_UAS\grassdata\Lake_wheeler...\PERMANENT

When you start GRASS, in the first input field (database) browse to grassdata, then you should see Location Lake_wh... on the left and Mapset PERMANENT on the right. Don't work in Mapset PERMANENT, create a new Mapset for each assignment. Select the new mapset and that's it. You don't need to download this location again for different assignment, you may need to import external data (the .pack or whatever else is specified).

It is generally better to keep other downloaded files (.pack) in a different folder than grassdata, think of grassdata as a database or geodatabase, it is meant to be manipulated using dedicated tools in GRASS, not file manager (unless you know what you are doing).