POSSE 2014-11 Feedback
From Foss2Serve
Contents |
To Do For Next Time
- Update all materials (slides and activities) with appropriate Creative Commons license.
Participant Observations (from ending session at POSSE)
- Provide actual contributions that participants can do.
- Have two different groups formed?
- One set of groups based on the project
- One set of groups based on the course
- Have different groups on different days?
- Have participants look at and comment on each other's work
- Some folks felt that logging the stage 1 activities was busy work
- Some folks felt overwhelmed by stage 1, felt better after stage 2
- End of spring has conflict with ICSE
- This timing worked, but having more lead time
- Very helpful to have two folks from the same institution
- Pair folks from different institutions during stage 1 to provide collaborators, similar to having two folks from same institution
- Ask for summary of experience of what you got out of POSSE
- Ask folks to put them on Opensource.com
Darci's Notes:
- Interesting to see how you can integrate into an existing curriculum and/or to build new curriculum
- Stage 1 exercises worked well regarding preparation for stage 2 – they were not over burdensome, the sequence was incredibly rich
- Thought I was doing busy work in some cases, e.g. how many commits. Why do the copy and paste kind of thing.
- The activity did force me to create a blog for example.
- It might have been helpful to ask us to look at other people’s posts.
- Complete newbie perspective – started worrying that stage 1 was going to be overwhelming. Stage 2 leveled this feeling; now have many pages of notes about things I want to do.
- What time of year works? Software engineering conference is in May. Stage 1 could have started a bit earlier. Reading articles activity – some overlap, too much?, create captcha, having multiple people from the same institution was good, set up pairs during stage 1 (to replicate the benefits of having more than one person from the same institution).
- Red Hat asks those who they fund to provide an immediate write up and a 1 year post evaluation.
- Yes, we will attend and we will do a summary report at a department meeting for example. Or post a summary to an institution’s website. The H stuff is always great promotional materials for the institution.
Thoughts for Stage 3
- Get folks to communicate things like roadblocks that they encounter after stage 2
Participant Observations from End of POSSE Surveys
Helpful Takeaway from Stage 1
- Exposure to tools used
- Information/resources
- Just learning about general points about it, the history, the terminology, the resources, tools, and how to find information about it
- Introduction to tools: IRC, Blogs, Wiki
- Entry into an FOSS world
- Now I feel like i can actually become part of a project and guide students how to do it
- Community support, IRC - My biggest takeaway is everyone can and should get involved in FOSS
- Was of communicating using IRC and wiki
- Background readings on FOSS
- Seeing (fieldtrips) to specific projects gives known starting oints, examples of activities (I know most of the tools)
- Exposure to how to get into a FOSS project. My philosophy already aligns with Open Source, but I have been isolated, ignorant
- Work on incorporating into courses
- Learning about how to start in open source. Where to start was the hardest part for me before this experience
- Figuring out how to use IRC, learning how to evaluate FOSS projects to figure out if they are suitable for student projects
- The readings
- Learn history of open source, wiki, git, evaluating a project
- Becoming knowledgeable of the breadth and depth of HFOSS through excellent sequence of exercises
Additions to POSSE Stage 1
- More HFOSS projects listed
- Starting it even more time before stage 2. This year it fell over my midterm exams and evaluations so it was hard to complete the activities
- Activities created at previous POSSES - though I suppose I could have gone and found these myself...
- Most of the material on how to teach FOSS was lost on me. I am at a point of just learning how to do FOSS, find a project. The Stage 1 materials were asking for details of things that I couldn't find the first page of
- I think stage 1 is well designed and covers the HFOSS material adequately
Takeaway from Stage 2
- Working on a team and learning the ropes and more details in a collaborative way
- Learning others programs and projects
- Collaborations, hands-on activities
- Interaction with other professors who have different experience level and getting ideas from them.
- Learned a lot about other FOSS projects. It was good to network with professors with keen interest in OpenMRS
- Relationship building, collaboration and idea sharing among the group
- Group working on the project
- Ideas for activities/assignments, connections with faculty at other institutions
- Contacts with others, in person was able to make collaborations, more than in wiki/IRC format
- Actually digging into a project (OpenMRS in my case). I didn't realize how big GitHub is (but fortunately I already use it). The dummy exercise of everyone hacking some program was AWESOME!
- Networking, off-the-main-agenda discussing about practically using OSS in courses
- Learning via the presentations/discussions (re-emphasizing stage 1) and doing the activities together (crucial piece)
- Meeting people I might be able to collaborate with in the future
- Meeting the people, seeing what everyone is doing/planning to do
- Hands-on activities, ideas for assignments/activities
- Beyond the exercises, meeting f2f others so there is a "face" with HFOSS
Additions to Stage 2
- A specific team that would focus on the type of courses and timing that related to community colleges
- Better food :-), more detailed case studies of how FOSS is used successfully at other schools
- Some more time for discussion, lots planned so several discussions were cut off to "stay on schedule"
- On of the teachers could go through a workflow (live) doing something on a real project. We talked all over it, and the dummy was good, but...
- I would have liked to separate by project sooner
- Maybe consolidating info on common pitfalls in starting an HFOSS project. There was a higher level overview presented
- Grouping based on the way we wanted to use in HFOSS in our classes rather than by project