User:Hfrancis
Howard Francis
Howard is currently an Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Pikeville in Pikeville, KY, where he has taught for almost two dozen years. He is also the program coordinator for computer science. His primary duties include teaching the schools CS0 Intro to CS, and two semester sequence of CS1. He also leads the senior project class, which is what leads him to FOSS. In addition to the CS classes, he teaches a wide variety of freshman and sophomore math classes.
In his spare time (someone needs to remind me what the term "spare time" means!) he is a somewhat active musician. He plays trumpet in the university's pep and concert bands, and in local summer community band, which he co-founded in 2010. He is also the organist and cantor at his church.
Answers to IRC Questions:
How do people interact?
Conversations take place by typing and reading everyone's messages. You always have an opportunity to scroll back through the conversation to check on parts of the conversation you may have missed.
What is the pattern of communication?
Everyone has equal opportunities to speak. Most messages are directed at everyone else there, but sometimes someone will mention a question to someone specific. No one is interrupted so everyone's voice is heard.
Are there any terms that seem to have special meaning?
The meetbot directions were new to me, those seemed to have some significance.
Can you make any other observations?
I've used IRC before; this seemed typical of a chat meeting.
IRC Channel Observation
I wasn't able to see a structured meeting, but I did notice many small informal conversations about the project. Most of them were asking if new revisions had been seen, and if they had, what feedback was being provided. I did see what seemed to be a new interested developer ask to get involved. It was suggested to join the mailing list first. I didn't understand a lot of the terms being thrown around. I hope it comes easy to me when I join the project.
Sugar Labs Guided Tour
Community
All three teams make use of IRC; two of them also have a mailing list. There seem to be a lot more people in the Activities team.
Bug Tracking
Bugs are sorted by urgency, with those needing the most attention at the top of the page. Each ticket has a unique number, and includes information about what part of the project it affects, a brief description, its current status, who's working on it, and its type and severity.
Repository
Judging by the URL, I suspect this is a local repository.
Release Cycle
The roadmap guides the activities for each release cycle. One a new release is completed, a new roadmap for the next release is planned.
Sahana-Eden Guided Tour
Community
These pages are very different. Each page directs you to how to participate, but because the jobs of developers, designers, and testers are all much different, there is a variety of information on how to participate. The team pages at Sugar Labs seemed much more uniform and consistent than the ones here.
Bug Tracking
The Sahana-Eden bug tracker first presents you with a menu of the type of bug report you'd like. Going to the Active Tickets report, the information there is very similar to that provided at Sugar Labs.
Repository
It looks like Sahana-Eden uses GitHub as its repository.
Roadmap
It looks like Sahana-Eden's road map goes past the next release. I also don't see specific dates in this road map as I did for Sugar Labs. Here there is just a list of goals for the next releases.
FOSS Classroom Activities
My main activity (and reason for participating in this workshop) would be to have my Senior Project class make one non-trivial contribution to the code for a FOSS project. In leading up to that final activity would preliminary work, much like we're doing here. There are many assignments and materials from the SoftHum web site that would be adapted for my class.
Seeing the volume of opportunities out there, I'm considering smaller activities for my CS0 and CS1 class. My CS0 could contribute to user documentation, and my CS1 could improve internal comments in the code. There are other activities I haven't thought of yet, I'm sure.
FOSS Project Evaluation
Media:Francis_Eden_Evaluation.xlsx
Stage 2 Exercise 2.6 This is a bit late, but I finally had time to answer these:
A. Planning a first HFOSS activity at your institution To help you plan your first HFOSS activity at your institution, please answer the following and include any questions you'd like to discuss. 1. What course(s) are you targeting? My main course is CS 480 Senior Project, but I'm wanting to try some small things in CS 109 Intro, and CS 221 OOP.
2. What learning outcomes would you like the students to achieve? CS 480 – Contribute to software development in a manner similar to “the real world” CS 109 – Become aware of some of the things computer scientists do CS 221 – Get a touch of industry-level programming
3. What type of activity do you want to incorporate? Sample activities could be HFOSS field trips, installing, documenting, testing, or code development. See http://xcitegroup.org/softhum/doku.php?id=f:50ways for more ideas. CS 480 – make a non-trivial code modification to a FOSS project CS 221 – I'm really thinking about the improve comments activity CS 109 – Download/evaluate?
4. What HFOSS project will you use? For POSSE, Sahana-Eden. For CS 480, I think I'll give them a choice For CS 221, probably OpenMRS For CS 109, not necessarily HFOSS, something for sourceforge though
a. What are the benefits of this project for this particular context (course & activity)? CS 480: I think by letting the students choose, they'll at least have a minimal interest in it CS 221: It's Java-based, which is the language they'd be learning. CS 109: The project would something they're (hopefully!) interested in.
b. What are potential stumbling blocks? CS 480: I'm really concerned about having enough time to acclimate my students with the project and community and have them contribute something meaningful. CS 221: There may be some resistance for all the setup work just to get started, but I think we'll be able to handle that. CS 109: There is a possibility that some students don't find a project to work on.
c. How do you want your students to interact with the community (if at all)? CS 480: I think students will need to be on mailing lists and on IRC. They'll need to know the scene to understand the project. CS 221: There maybe a need for some interaction, but probably not too much CS 109: there won't be a need for any interaction
d. What tools will your students have to learn (if any)? CS 480: Most likely Eclipse, plus anything special to go with their selected project. CS 221: I think they could do the editing in Greenfoot or BlueJ. Both provide easy generation of documentation from code. CS 109: None.
e. Do you currently have the environment for this project to run (ie. is the hardware/OS available at your institution)? CS 480: Depends on the project. I have run Sahana-Eden on my computer. I'll certainly check to see what else needs to be done for other projects based on my students' work. CS 221: They won't necessarily need to run the project. CS 109: Students will be selecting the project, hopefully something they can run.
5. What type of materials/background do you think you will need to provide to the students? CS 480: I think I will need to do with them much of what I've been asked to do here. I would have to get them familiar with the FOSS community and how interactions work. CS 221: They'll need a brief introduction to FOSS, but they should understand documentation by the time I get to this assignment CS 109: Many of them might not be aware of FOSS software. I'll need to describe what I use and show them what all is out there.
6. What would you like the students to do during this activity? CS 480: Students will need to be blogging about their progress, much like we are here. Eventually they should identify some task that they can complete in their groups. CS 221: Students should spend time learning how to use the project, and learning the classes that make up the project. Eventually they should take one class and improve its comments CS 109: First they need to understand how to find things on sites like SourceForge. From there, they need to find a program they like, download it, install and use it, then perform an evaluation.
7. How long do you expect the activity to take? CS 480: This would be a semester long activity. CS 221: I could see needing a couple of weeks for my students to become familiar with the project. Then probably one week looking for a class that needed improved comments and fixing it. CS 109: This would likely be a two-week assignment.
8. What will the students hand in? CS 480: Obviously, their final modification would be important, but chat logs, blog posts, and many other things describing their experiences will be used as well. CS 221: Before and after versions of the class they modified. CS 109: There would be an evaluation form for students to fill out.
9. How will you assess what students have learned from this activity? CS 480: Students in this class typically give a presentation as their final exam. CS 221: I expect the comments in their own programs will improve. CS 109: I haven't thought this far ahead.
B. Planning participation in POSSE Stage 3
To help you think about what types of support you will need to implement the activity above,
please answer the following and include any questions you'd like to discuss.
1. What do you see as the biggest obstacle for implementing this activity?
My only real concern is with CS 480. I'm worried that a project won't present itself, or there won't be time to complete it.
2. What type of support would help overcome this obstacle? I'd like to see examples of others who have completed a project like this. Perhaps we can make larger teams from multiple classes on different campuses.
3. Is it more important to have support on the HFOSS side or the curriculum side? For example, the HFOSS project, Ushahidi, or by course, CS 2? I think I'll need more support with the HFOSS side. I think I can work out the curriculum once I get on board, but getting connected with a project seems like a bigger hurdle for me.
4. It is important to have active members in the Stage 3 small groups. What obstacles might prevent you from being an active member? What would help overcome these obstacles? My biggest obstacle is that I couldn't be there for Stage 2. I suppose if I made early contributions to the group, it would help get me in with the rest.
