Open source in education
Educators
Diversify your classes and better prepare your students for careers with knowledge and experience that is in demand in industry.
How it helps
The open source way can diversify your classes and better prepare your students
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Keep current
Integrating open source projects into your syllabus will keep your course current and relevant.
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Serve students well
Teaching open source culture, tools, and development methods provides students with skills and experience that increase their chances of getting hired—while commanding a higher salary.
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Increase diversity
Humanitarian open source projects attract historically underrepresented groups, such as women and minorities, to computing.
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Lead and learn collaboratively
You can model collaborative learning and leading working through projects with students.
POSSE
Professors' Open Source Software Experience
Are you a professor teaching a Computer Science or Software Engineering class in the next school year?
There are more professors than ever hoping to teach the open source development process to their students—but working in the open source world can be a daunting proposition. Professors themselves have only a limited amount of time to learn about open source, and are often unsure about how, exactly, to get started.
POSSE (Professors' Open Source Software Experience) is a Red Hat- and National Science Foundation-sponsored cultural immersion in the tools and practices of open source communities, designed for professors looking for ways to bring their students into active participation in those communities.
Participants complete online coursework that introduces them to open source, then attend an in-person workshop where they deep-dive into open source participation and the curricular and pedagogical considerations of teaching open source. By the end of the workshop, participants have a much better understanding of the workings of open source projects and a strong network of contacts to lean on as they begin to bring students into the open source world.
Learn more about the POSSE program and find out if you're eligibleEducator resources
Embrace open source as an educator
- Teaching open source—education success stories
- Teachingopensource.org is a community and resource hub for educators interested in open source.
- OpenHatch matches prospective free software contributors with communities, tools, and education, and mentors to help if your students get stuck