Software Projects Using Free And Open Source Software: Opportunities, Challenges, And Lessons Learned

Providing students with the professional, communication, and technical skills necessary to contribute to an ongoing software project is critical, yet often difficult in higher education. Involving student teams in real-world projects developed by professional software engineers for actual users is invaluable. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has emerged as an important approach to creating, managing, and distributing software products. Involvement in a FOSS project provides students with experience developing within a professional environment, with a professional community, and has the additional benefit that all communication and artifacts are publicly accessible. Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) projects benefit the human condition in some manner. They can range from disaster management to microfinance to election-monitoring applications. This article discusses the benefits and challenges of students participating in HFOSS projects within the context of undergraduate computing degree programs. This article reports on a 6-year study of students' self-reported attitudes and learning from participation in an HFOSS project. Results indicate that working on an HFOSS project increases interest in computing. In addition, students perceive that they are gaining experience in developing software in a distributed environment with the attendant skills of communication, distributed teamwork, and more.

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A Multi-Institutional Study of Learning via Student Involvement in Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Projects

Hislop

Ellis

Pulimood

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual International Conference on International Computing Education Research

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This paper reports on a study of student opinion of the impact of participation in Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) on motivation, computing learning, and major/career direction. The study builds on an existing body of work in student participation in HFOSS. Six institutions with a variety of profiles are involved in the study and the paper reports on quantitative analysis of Likert survey items. Results of Mann-Whitney U tests on Likert data are mixed. Positive results indicate that students perceived that participating in an HFOSS project made them more comfortable with computing and improved their perceived ability to maintain a project and interact with professionals. Negative results include a perceived decrease in perception of computing skills, which may result from an increased understanding of the complexity of developing a large, real-world project.

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Software Projects Using Free And Open Source Software: Opportunities, Challenges, And Lessons Learned

Cited by 3 publications

References 9 publications

Wikis for Education - Helping Students Communicate and Collaborate

Wikis for Education - Helping Students Communicate and Collaborate

Team Project Experiences in Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS)

A Multi-Institutional Study of Learning via Student Involvement in Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Projects

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