50 ways to be a FOSSer: simple ways to involve students & faculty (abstract only)

  • Authors:

  • Clif Kussmaul;Heidi J.C. Ellis;Gregory W. Hislop

  • Affiliations:

  • Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA, USA;Western New England University, Springfield, MA, USA;Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Participating in free and open source software (FOSS) has numerous benefits for students (and faculty), and there is increasing interest in encouraging such participation. There is a broad range of possible contributions to FOSS projects including documentation, testing, coding, and more. This range allows people with a variety of backgrounds, including little or no CS background, to contribute to a FOSS project. This poster describes the status of a project to identify and categorize learning activities that contribute to FOSS. During Spring 2011, an NSF-sponsored workshop on student participation in humanitarian FOSS for the SoftHum project brought together a group of experienced FOSS developers, faculty, and students. One result of this workshop was a list of nearly 100 learning activities that could contribute to FOSS projects and provide meaningful experiences for students and faculty. We were surprised by the variety of results. Some of the activities have been used successfully or are variations of familiar learning activities; others are ideas that seem promising but require further development and validation. We are experimenting with individual activities, and seeking colleagues interested in doing likewise. We are also mapping the learning activities onto Computer Science Curriculum 2008 to make it easier for faculty to identify relevant activities and map them to course or program learning objectives. The poster briefly summarizes relevant background, describe the process used to identify appropriate activities and provide examples of activities and their mappings.