TOS History

TeachingOpenSource was set up in March 2009 to serve as a neutral collaboration point for everyone involved in TeachingOpenSource. The original goals included:

Work on Open Source educational models, support and funding schemes, community relationships, and other issues.
Advocate for the changes that are necessary to further the goal of TeachingOpenSource.

The initial collaboration points were a wiki, the Planet, and the TeachingOpenSource Mailing List; these had been extended with the #teachingopensource IRC channel and a monthly conference call. The TOS mailing list and #teachingopensource IRC channel are still actively used by the community.

And then there was POSSE (Professors’ Open Source Software Experience). POSSEs provide professional development for instructors interested in student participation in Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS). Read more about POSSE. Prior Efforts:

A number of previous initiatives have fed into the creation of TeachingOpenSource. In particular:

Brian Behlendorf, Karl Fogel, and others created the original teachingopensource.org mailing list and wiki. The original wiki page, which documented discussions which took place at OSCON 2008, has been archived on this site. Many thanks to Brian and Karl for transferring the teachingopensource.org domain.

A group of professors, students, and representatives from educational institutions, companies, and Open Source communities met at FSOSS 2008 for theTOS@FSOSS track. This led to the original versions of the some of the pages.

HFOSS Education

Foss2serve grew out of efforts by university faculty to find ways for students to participate in humanitarian FOSS projects. Early explorations revealed that student participation in FOSS projects provided excellent educational opportunities. Participation in humanitarian projects added additional facets that were highly motivating and educational. Foss2serve aimed to keep the focus on instructors and students in higher education, but also strived to make learning resources available to anyone wanting to participate in a FOSS project.

Goals of Foss2serve

The overarching goal was to promote student participation in humanitarian FOSS communities. This effort had two prongs. To:

Add to knowledge of learning and community by exploring how FOSS culture can be applied in computing education
Use knowledge of FOSS learning and community to have a practical impact on computing education and to involve students in making a positive contribution to society via participation in HFOSS projects

To support this goal, foss2serve aimed to:

Provide faculty development programs to help instructors gain competency in humanitarian FOSS
Build small learning communities focused on particular humanitarian FOSS projects for teachers, learners, and FOSS developers
Create, collect, and share learning materials to teach students how to participate in humanitarian FOSS projects

Indicators of Success

Primary elements that would define a successful result are:

Students participating in HFOSS projects and making useful contributions to HFOSS products and communities. These contributions occur in the context of courses, independent projects, and informal school sponsored activities such as clubs, and hacking events
Student participation in HFOSS is well-recognized strategy that institutions use to teach students about computing. Basic understanding of HFOSS is part of core required material. Additional HFOSS learning is part of the available electives
Improved learning resulting from participation in HFOSS is well documented and well known
University faculty or staff people are core members of some HFOSS projects. This may include cases were universities are owners, committers, and highly-valued contributors to HFOSS projects

Secondary elements that would define a successful result are:

HFOSS activities provide students and faculty with opportunities to collaborate across institutions in a manner similar to the Canadian UCOSP program
HFOSS activities provide a basis for outreach to high schools. Although there is too much of a learning curve for most high school students, informal HFOSS opportunities could reach advanced students, HFOSS can provide case studies and vignettes showing high school students what college students have done. HFOSS can also provide opportunities for high school students could contribute to activities such as bug confirmation, documentation, and usability testing

Prior Projects

Eventually, this site will bring together work from several prior projects, including SoftHum and HumIT. HumIT_Migration, SoftHum_Migration