[Osdc-edu-authors] Draft article: a professor's perpsective - the landscape of academic participation in open source projects

[Mary Bitter]

I can take it through proofing on this end if there aren't any edits 
from this group -- any edits?  I'll also get this article in the queue 
for an image.

Also, Mel, if Heidi will register as a user, we can set her up as an 
author etc. & add her to this email list.
http://opensource.com/user/register

thanks much,
Mary Ann

Mel Chua wrote:
> Heidi Ellis from Western New England College has a draft article up 
> here, text also pasted below:
>
> http://opensource.com/education/10/11/professors-perspective-landscape-academic-participation-open-source-projects 
>
>
> Comments welcome. Will try to get her accounts + list memberships set 
> up soon so I don't have to be a go-between. :)
>
> --Mel
>
> ----
>
> I must start this with a huge "Thank you" to Mel Chua for visiting us 
> in Connecticut and for prompting/prodding me to think more deeply 
> about how open source and academia work together to accomplish 
> education. I believe I now have a better picture as to the landscape 
> of student and academic participation in open source projects.
>
> At first look, student participation in open source projects seems 
> like it should be relatively easy to accomplish. Sure, from the 
> teaching perspective, there are issues related to selecting a project, 
> learning curve for the project, finding a mentor, identifying ways 
> that students can participate, figuring out how to grade things, and 
> more. But these things are surrmountable. From my perspective of 
> trying to do this over several years, some rocks in the river have 
> appeared that make navigating the current of open source involvement 
> trickier than it first appeared.
>
> When two groups collaborate, they typically do so to accomplish some 
> common goals or to work together to accomplish goals for both groups. 
> In this case, the goals of the two environments differ. The open 
> source environment seeks to create a product that meets user needs. 
> The academic environment seeks to produce students with certain 
> knowledge and skill set.
>
> More importantly, the goals of the groups in the collaboration between 
> open source and academia differ. Open source communities would like to 
> see larger numbers of developers contributing to their projects (as 
> would I!). And some in the open source community view students as a 
> possible source for these future developers (I happen to agree). 
> Adademia sees open source as an opportunity for students to gain 
> real-world experience, learn professionalism, and have some evidence 
> of software proficiency that they can demonstrate to potential 
> employers. Making a contribution is helpful, but not essential.
>
> Can open source/academic collaborations accomplish the goals of both 
> groups? I think so, but there are some differences in the environments 
> which present... well, we'll call them "learning opportunities." In 
> order for a particular collaboration to be successful, it helps if 
> both groups understand these differences.
>
> While talking with Mel, it became clear how much the two environments 
> differ with respect to pace, planning, and constraints. The open 
> source way is very opportunistic and flexible while academia is very 
> planned and structured. The open source way emphasizes short-term 
> optimization and taking immediate advantage of resources (e.g., 
> developer expertise, time, funding) as they appear. Resources can 
> become available and disappear relatively quickly. Due to the fluid 
> nature of participation, it is difficult to estimate long-range (one 
> or more years) resource availability in the open source environment. 
> This is not to say that open source projects do not do long-term 
> planning, but that the development process is sufficiently flexible to 
> be able to select among different paths to a long-term goal as new 
> paths open up.
>
> Academia is built around long-term optimization and allocating 
> resources over time. Academics have a fairly fixed set of resources 
> (e.g., time, instructors, students) which vary little over the long 
> term (several to many years). In addition, academics operate under a 
> series of constraints on those resources. Academia is bound by time 
> constraints such as semester schedules and class hours. It is bound 
> curricularly by syllabi, learning outcomes and grading. These things 
> cannot typically be changed within a 3-4 month timeframe and sometimes 
> not within a year. This limits the ability of academia to take 
> advantage of the opportunities that arise spontaneously from open source.
>
> The pace of the two environments is very different. The open source 
> environment tends to be fast-paced and less predictable (more 
> intermittent?) as people have more or less time to contribute to 
> projects over time. Academia has a much slower (some might say 
> glacial) pace that has higher predictability due to the regularity of 
> the academic schedule.
>
> Note that class schedules are frequently created six to eight months 
> before the term starts. In addition, curricula plans must include the 
> four years of a student's stay at an institution. Therefore, classes 
> must be supplied to meet the curricula that was in place at the time 
> that a student entered the institution and changes in curricula are 
> typically phased in one year at a time over four years.
>
> Clearly there are some large differences in culture. But I think that 
> open source/academic collaborations can work as there are also some 
> strong commonalities between the groups. The open osurce and academic 
> environments share a desire to "do something", to produce a product 
> that people will use. Both groups have a love of learning and both 
> groups are based on the precept that something (knowledge/software) 
> should be accessible to everyone. Both groups have a desire to belong 
> to a professional group, to be interacting with like professionals and 
> participating in ongoing professional activity. And interestingly, I 
> think both groups share a desire to be self-directed, to have control 
> over what they do.
>
> What have I learned? Lots!
>
> Participation in open source definitely benefits students. I have 
> observed students gaining lots of professional knowledge and 
> experience and also forming professional networks through their 
> participation in open source. Many students are motivated by 
> participating on an open source project and they get a better 
> understanding of why the content of those courses we made them take 
> matter.
>
> Setting expectations is important. Expectations are important for both 
> the student and for the open source community. The differences in 
> cultures identified above must be understood by both groups in order 
> to support a successful collaboration. The actual participation in an 
> open source project looks different from the academic and open source 
> perspectives.
>
> I can be more opportunistic. My preferred approach is to plan things 
> out well in advance. Talking to Mel made me realize that there were 
> lots of opportunities that occur spontaneously and that with little 
> effort, I could take advantage of these opportunities if I'm willing 
> to abandon my "plan". For instance, with 2 days notice, she and I set 
> up a Hack Share where we invited Sebastian Dziallas to come "hack 
> live" and teach students how to package an application. I would not 
> have attempted this on my own, assuming that I would need lead time to 
> advertise, get resources, etc. However, it was very well attended and 
> a huge success on a small scale. Could I have gotten a larger 
> attendance? Sure, but not in my window of opportunity. The outcome was 
> that by not having the time to plan, the Hack Share may have reached 
> fewer people. But if I had to take the time to plan, the event might 
> not have occured at all. So the trade-off is to reach fewer people in 
> smaller ways. The conversations with Mel have caused me to be more 
> considered in evaluating and better able to take advantage of 
> opportunities that arise.
>
> Academia needs to be sure to give back to the OSS community. One very 
> real danger in student participation in OSS is for students to learn 
> from the community, to gain from the community but not provide 
> anything back to that community. This violates the open source way and 
> could easily contribute to the break up of open source/academic 
> collaborations. Professors must find a way to provide some value to 
> the open source community. This value does not necessarily need to be 
> in the form of code and could easily take the form of documentation, 
> wiki gardening, etc.
>
> I believe that our efforts in involving students in open source 
> projects will pay off for the open source community. However, I 
> believe that many of these benefits will not be reaped for several to 
> many years. I say this for several reasons. First, many students are 
> focused first on getting their degree and then on getting a job. These 
> are folks who are (rightly so) spending most of their energy on 
> establishing careers. This means that for a year and perhaps longer 
> after graduation, these folks may not have time to contribute to OSS.
>
> Second, I believe that students will carry the banner for open osurce, 
> but that it will take time for the idea to spread. Remember that 
> students are not professionals and they are learning open source 
> participation in addition to all their other classes. They typically 
> will have a much longer entry timeframe into open source than an 
> experienced developer. Lastly, academia moves at a snail's pace 
> compared to the open source world. It will take time for professors to 
> understand the opportunities offered by involving students in open 
> source. And it will take them even longer to be able to change their 
> own classes to include open source and longer still to have open 
> source integrated across a curriculum.
>
> These observations are both positive and negative for the open source 
> community. The bad news is that there is not likely to be a huge 
> influx of new open source developers coming from college students in 
> the near future. The good news is that there is likely to be a trickle 
> of such developers and that this small stream is likely to continue 
> over several to many years. And hopefully, the stream will grow as 
> word spreads and as more professors adopt approaches to involving 
> students in open source projects. One significant benefit is the 
> growing awareness of open source within the computing student 
> population and beyond.
>
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