InstructorLedProjects
Education Oriented HFOSS Projects
The original focus of the effort to involve students in open source was aimed at assisting faculty. Guidance was provided, learning materials were created, and workshops were scheduled to help provide the infrastructure needed and much time was spent on finding a project that was deemed supportive of student involvement, but there were numerous hurdles. The code base was large, projects often utilized unfamiliar technologies, and the response time from the community didn’t always fit the short time frame within which courses are offered. There were, however, key elements of these larger open source projects that were deemed essential. Faculty wanted students to contribute toward a “real” project, one that lived on from one term to the next, and one that they had enough control over to ensure that students could thrive. Education Oriented HFOSS Projects solved many of these problems. The following projects were created in an academic environment with academic goals in mind.
Open Energy Dashboard
Open Energy Dashboard (OED) is a sustainability project that is Humanitarian Free and Open Source (HFOSS). It has been developed by faculty and students and is in use to improve energy use on multiple college campuses. OED is a mature project that revolves around sustainability, a topic that excites students and their friends. It provides quality onboarding materials and offers extensive support and mentoring to all students and/or student teams involved in the project. If desired, course targeted issues and work for students that effectively integrates them in OED can be provided. It is generally possible to focus student work on certain technologies (front-end, back-end, database, graphics, CI/testing, etc.) and areas to better suit a course's goals.
LibreFoodPantry
LibreFoodPantry is a project that strives to support local food pantries with quality, free and open source software (FOSS) to help them serve their guests. LibreFoodPantry is an umbrella project that is developing food pantry software to support food pantries in the following institutions:
- Worcester State University - Thea's Pantry
- Western New England University - Bear Necessities Market
- Nassau Community College - NEST
- Simmons University - REEF Center
The pantries at each of these institutions operates slightly differently. Code is shared as much possible between application, yet code is customized for each individual application.
FarmData2
FarmData2 is a an application that supports the operation and certification requirements for small organic farming operations. Features include:
- Web application for recording and reporting on crop and livestock production within the context of small organic farming operations
- Crop production records include seeding, transplanting, harvest, cover crop, compost, fertilization, irrigation, pest scouting, and spray activities
- Livestock production records track animals from birth to slaughter or sale and include pasture moves, periodic and veterinary care and logging of egg production
- Records of packing, distribution and customer invoicing are also maintained
- All records and reporting features are designed to closely align with organic certification requirements and to support the certification and recertification process
