[TOS] Some tools for academic institutions

[Carlos Jensen]

Sorry for the long email. Since the list has seen so much traffic and 
discussion in the last days I figured I'd share some of the tools we've 
been working on here at Oregon State to introduce more OS and OS 
concepts into the CS curriculum.

The first is a student oriented FOSS hosting/social networking site 
(sourceforge meets facebook) called Beaversource (Oregon State's mascot 
is the beaver, don't ask...). http://beaversource.oregonstate.edu/
It is built on Elgg and Trac, and available to the whole OSU campus. The 
goal is to provide a FOSS entry point for the 90% or so of students who 
are not as motivated/confident in their skills.

The theory is that we first bring students into the social network 
(freshman year), they build some social ties with peers (good thing in 
general, especially for underrepresented groups), and get familiar with 
many of the tools, techniques, and work practices of the FOSS community 
(thanks to Trac's all-in-one project management capabilities). As they 
progress through their classes, we host projects for them, help them 
identify peers to work with, highlight cool and fun things others are 
working on, etc. Once they build some confidence, and their projects 
grow, they are gently ushered out to larger outside FOSS hosting and 
projects. If nothing else (and they dont get bitten by the FOSS bug) 
they'll learn how to use an svn repository, milestones, bug tracking, 
mailing lists, blogs, and wiki's from day 1...

The site is world-viewable, but primarily intended for OSU students, 
faculty, and staff. Others can join in, either through guest accounts 
(through invitation), or by sponsoring projects (our soon to be deployed 
marketplace). The idea is for the market place to be a source for 
student class or recreational projects.

We have just recently deployed it (around new year), and have 374 
students signed up (mostly CS and ECE students as we are sorely lacking 
tutorials, faq's etc yet). We have 53 projects, not all terribly active, 
some closed source (class assignments), but it is a start. Our next step 
is polishing some of the rough edges, documentation, and preparing it 
for deployment at other academic institutions that may be interested. We 
have a demo account: bsc_demo p:BSC.Demo if anyone wants to check it 
out. We're also working on a Karma/Merit Badge system to foster the 
kinds of interactions we'd like to see in an academic institution; 
different types of contribution, tolerance, mentorship, promoting 
diversity, service, and especially seniors reaching to tutor and recruit 
freshmen and sophomores into projects.

Second tool is the OSWALD, a flexible, and low-cost (~$200) UMPC running 
Linux. We're finding a lot of students hesitate trying Linux because 
they don't want to "screw up" windows on their primary machine. We've 
tried soothing those fears by having install-fests, USB sticks, liveCD's 
etc, but it is a barrier. The OSWALD is a little game-console like 
device which they all have to buy as freshmen, is used in classes and 
labs (running Java), and gives us a lot of flexibility to teach a 
variety of cs topics. It was developed by 2 ugrad students, and will be 
deployed April 1 to our freshman classes (fingers crossed). The upper 
level students are going to be charged with writing drivers, porting 
software, writing libraries etc for this platform, as well as a number 
of Linux flavors. Good excuse for them to get their hands dirty while 
working on something they'll hopefully care about. More info here: 
http://beaversource.oregonstate.edu/projects/cspfl/wiki

Drop me an email if you are interested in learning more about either tools.

C

-- 
Carlos Jensen
Assistant Professor
School of EECS, Oregon State University
+1-541-737-2555