User:Kevin.buffardi

Kevin is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at California State University, Chico (aka "Chico State") where he teaches Software Engineering and Usability Engineering. He integrates FOSS projects into assignments for his students and is researching the impact of fostering a collaboration between students and local software professionals through FOSS. He co-founded the Chico Open Source Consortium (COSC), which is developing Bossy UI, a framework of data-driven web components.

FOSS Class Activities

1. Fixing bugs - A lot of existing projects already have knowledge of bugs that need to be fixed. This is an important aspect of software maintenance that would be valuable for my Software Engineering class (a higher-level undergraduate course in the computer science major).

2. Extending features - Likewise, many projects have feature lists that they would like to implement but have not had the resources to do so yet. My Software Engineering students could tackle adding new features which would help their understanding and appreciation of designing/developing for extensibility. Although not always considered "features," my students could also contribute unit tests to help exercise FOSS projects and expose existing faults.

3. User Experience Research and Design - I also teach an interdisciplinary course in Usability Engineering that concentrates on following user-centered design principles to improve human-computer interaction. This class involves semester-long projects where students could evaluate, redesign, user test, and suggest & document user interface design improvements.