Grant Braught

Meeting the strong demand for computing professionals will require attracting and retaining more students in computing degree programs. Women and people of color are significantly underrepresented among computing students, and these groups provide an opportunity to both create a more equitable discipline and meet the need for more computing graduates. In order to attract more of these students, computing educators must improve the quality, appeal and student success rate in computing degree programs. This presentation discusses an education effort that helps to address this challenge by expanding the community of faculty incorporating Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) into computing education. HFOSS education provides a collaborative environment that supports active learning with real-world tasks. Students gain both technical and professional skills while also acquiring a first-hand understanding of the potential for computing to have both social relevance and positive societal impact. The ability of computing to “do good” has been shown to attract women and other underrepresented groups into computing disciplines. The project is intended to have broader impact in the following areas: a) improving student retention and expanding appeal to women and underrepresented groups; b) providing real-world learning of professional and technical skills in a complex, authentic environment that prepares students for professional practice; c) extending understanding of the impact of HFOSS pedagogy and approaches on student and instructor role and identities; and d) increasing student understanding of the potential of computing to improve the human condition and in student awareness of professional responsibility. Initial work has included several surveys of undergraduate students (209 and 360 participants) that indicate women and underrepresented groups are more strongly motivated by the humanitarian nature of HFOSS projects. The presentation will include results of these surveys and discussion of HFOSS education as an approach to making computing more diverse while also advancing student knowledge of open source.

Other people: Heid Ellis

Engaging students in free and open source software (FOSS) projects is educationally rewarding, however experience shows that it is challenging for both students and faculty. Engagement in FOSS fosters students’ technical, professional and personal development in ways that "class-size" projects cannot. Students can study and interact with large, complex, real-world software artifacts, tools, and development processes central to modern software development and in high demand. They can observe and practice professional skills including communication, collaboration, critical thinking, question asking, and technical writing. In addition, growing evidence suggests that a context of social good, such as in FOSS projects with humanitarian goals (HFOSS), may attract more women and other underrepresented student groups to computing. However, these advantages come with a number of practical and cultural challenges. Work in FOSS communities is often less structured, even chaotic, as compared to traditional academic assignments. The content and timing of community responses to student inquiries and contributions may not align well with student background or assignment due dates. Assignments created around a project can be rendered quickly obsolete as the project evolves. As a result, faculty doing this work have found it difficult to transition students from classroom activities to participating in open source projects “in the wild.” This talk will present our work on two intermediate steps, HFOSS Kits and Education-Oriented HFOSS Projects, designed to bridge the gap between classroom activities and student participation in FOSS “in the wild.” An HFOSS kit is a snapshot of an active HFOSS project’s artifacts (code-base(s), issues, documentation, communications, etc.), taken at a particular point in time and packaged with student learning activities, an instructor guide, and a containerized development environment. Using a snapshot that is independent of the live project creates an authentic environment, while enabling the creation of reusable educational activities and providing a more comfortable space for students to experiment and learn. Using a containerized development environment minimizes startup time, allows automated context-sensitive feedback, and the simulation of community interaction. Education-Oriented HFOSS Projects, have real clients and are consciously designed and managed to facilitate faculty and undergraduate student engagement. Some examples managed by our team include LibreFoodPantry, FarmData2, Open Energy Dashboard, and Open Circuits. These are ongoing projects that continue across semesters and welcome outside participation. They are often humanitarian in nature and connect to causes or communities that align with institutional mission and student experiences. They use modern technologies but are architected, scoped and managed to facilitate student learning, support specific curricular goals, accommodate academic schedules, and understand that these objectives will slow project development. As entire new cohorts of students engage each term, particular attention is paid to onboarding, including documentation at the appropriate level and fully containerized development environments that make the process as easy as possible. We have talked about these approaches at computing education conferences and are excited to hear different perspectives on our approaches from FOSS practitioners and educators in this community. Thus, significant time will be allocated for feedback and discussion with the audience.

Other people: Karl R. Wurst