POSSE 2014-11 Feedback

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