I'll be teaching a course at SUNY Albany this Fall, "Open Source
Software Practices." The course is an introduction to the principles and
practices of open source software communities, organized in four major
topics: Economics, Community, Intellectual Rights & Business models.
I would like to employ team-based and project-based learning (hands-on
verses lectures) within the course and thought it would be great to have
the students "join" the TOSW project. As many of the students do not
have a background in software development, I thought the TOSW project
would be a great way to experience an open community without the
technical barriers. After all, TOSW should be applicable to disciplines
outside open source software, e.g. open hardware, open education, open
data, open culture, etc.
This would be a great way for them to experience first hands and
hands-on how a community works (or does not) and thus actually
contributing to a project either through content or practices. As
students trying to understand how and why open source works, they should
all be valuable contributors in various ways: "testers," "QA"
"documentation" "bug-reporting" and even "contributors." I
think I would
manage the "committer" role of editing the wiki--but I could see this
ultimate role being an objective in the course.
Thoughts?
Patrick
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Patrick Masson
General Manager, Director & Secretary to the Board
Open Source Initiative
855 El Camino Real, Ste 13A, #270
Palo Alto, CA 94301
United States
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Direct Phone: (970) 4MASSON
Skype: massonpj
Em: masson(a)opensource.org <mailto:masson@opensource.org>
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www.opensource.org <
http://www.opensource.org>