Some notes from Clif Kussmal via private email, shared with permission, comments inline.
> Here are some ideas for ways to make it easier for people to > contribute and benefit. Hi, Clif - I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to respond. It's Inbox Zero day today for me. :) Would you mind if I shared this thread with the TOS list, btw? I think there's some good stuff here. Clif: Sure, feel free to share with TOS. I probably should have posted it. > Small Steps. It's difficult for me (and others, I suspect) to find > large blocks of time for big thinking-intensive projects such as > writing papers, designing& building big systems, etc. It's much > easier to find small blocks (for panel proposals, reviewing, > tweaking existing code or assignments). Agreed. I think breaking down tech work into bite-sized pieces that add up into larger things are a hallmark of good FOSS projects, too (heck, of good project management) - academic-wise, one thing that might seem more obvious to you and Greg and Heidi is what those tasks are and how to break them down. I don't yet feel like I've got a good sense for what the "tiny tasks" can be in a professor's life. Clif: Hmm - maybe you need a Open Source Software Evangelist Faculty Indoctrination OSSEFI (get it?) - Oh, wait, it's called "grad school". :-) > Appropriate FOSS Projects & Student Assignments. We talk as though > FOSS was a homogenous community& set of projects& practices, when > it's a giant diverse network of loosely (lousily?) coupled > communities/projects/practices. Oh geez, yes. Does the "FOSS as study abroad" experience help at all with that? (Countries and cities and regions and etc are all different, but Southeast Asia tends to be like this, Latin America tends to be like this, this specific town in Chile is like this..) One of the more interesting ideas I've heard is the "Lonely Planet Guide to GNOME" (or Git or OpenOffice or FireFox or whatever community you're working on). Brief history, cultural tips, local lingo, do's and don'ts, places to go (in the physical sense of conferences and hackathons and companies doing interesting things, and the virtual sense of "these webpages are key") - traveler's guide for newcomers. Clif: I think foreign travel is a great metaphor. I'm not sure we know what the "regions" are in FOSS space, though, let alone the pros & cons of visiting each region. > We should work to identify & catalog FOSS projects and student > assignments, and identify minimal prereqs. If a teacher can spend > 1/2/3 classes/assignments on FOSS, how could they start? Wikipedia? > defect tracking? IRC& forums? How do things other than FOSS do this? There must be something like "I could spend 1/2/3 classes/assignments on... renewable energy!" or "community service!" or <insert topic here!> - is there an initiative from some other sort of group that's made it exceptionally easier for teachers to pick up on and adapt activities for their classes? Clif: This seems to be very difficult. Greg, Heidi, any ideas or insights? > Reusable Materials. By this I mean presentations, activities, > assignments, projects, etc. that have been tested/validated, work > well, and can be adapted to local conditions. This appears to be > difficult to do well, so we should study successful models. One thing I've heard is that professors are independent souls who take pride in crafting their classes, and would resent being handed a turnkey "hey, here's your class!" solution - the process seems to be really creative, like scavenging for bits here and there and making it into your own whole. This has struck me often as similar to the way FOSS users put together their computing environments. (Heck, most people do this to their computer in some way, FOSS or not.) We tweak things, change the wallpaper, script our shortcuts, choose our applications... I'm not sure if this is a model that could be translated into the teaching materials realm, but it's a thought. Clif: I think there's a broad continuum. Some profs (including me) prefer to roll their own courses, while others prefer to use a textbook with presentation slides, web-based activities, assignments, etc. Profs who do FOSS, attend POSSEs, etc. are probably skewed toward the former. But everyone (profs, FOSS users, etc) need to get better at adapting/adopting successes from other people, and packaging their own successes for others. > My professional motto is "never do anything for less than 3 ulterior > motives" - if I have 3 good reasons, it's still worthwhile if 1 or > 2 fall through. So I look for cool FOSS projects, that are easy to > engage students in, and which I can use in consulting& research. If > I develop teaching materials, I (try to) publish or present them too. > We should look for more ways that TOS can a) save time for everyone; > b) help students learn; c) help faculty get publications/grants/etc. > Then it's less of a zero-sum game, and everyone wins. > > For example, we could propose a grant project where: > > 1) we develop & provide a framework/workflow to develop TOS > activities & assignments. > > 2) we issue call for participation from the broader community > > 3) we hold a 1-day workshop at a major conference to introduce the > framework > > 4) each participant develops & pilots a few activities/assignments > > 5) each participant reviews, pilots, adopts,& evaluates some of the > act/ass, using assessment instruments developed for the whole > project (for consistency). > > 6) we hold subsequent workshops at major conferences (covering some > or all expenses for participants who completed assigned tasks) 7) > each participant publishes/presents their work, and we > publish/present a meta-analysis ...whoa, I didn't even look at this while writing up the education strategy stuff for Red Hat (http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/Red_Hat_education_strategy), but I... feel like you've just rewritten it as a grant proposal. Which, perhaps, is something we may want to look into for subsequent years if the first round is a success - I get the sense we need to think about those sorts of things waaaaay ahead of time. :) --Mel _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
