[TOS] POSSE remote: curriculum feedback needed

Sebastian Dziallas sebastian at when.com
Sun Jan 9 20:08:48 UTC 2011


Note that this was originally supposed to be a blog post, but I can't get
Movable Type to work right now and it's 11pm, so I'll just post it here and
let Mel blog it.

POSSE Doha, day 0

Mel and I are in Doha right now, getting ready for teaching a new
experimental iteration of the POSSE curriculum format (
http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE_modules). We just got back
from dinner with Saquib Razak and Affan Syed, who'll be working with us
tomorrow - we had a great time, interesting conversations and stories (more
to be told at FUDCon) and even ice cream afterwards. For those new to POSSE,
it is a week-long workshop for college and university faculty who want to
get their students involved in contributing to open source communities. The
workshop introduces professors to how open source works, how to make a
contribution (tools and culture), and how to fit these sorts of experiences
into their classrooms and the context of a school year.

One consistent piece of feedback we've gotten is that a week is too long for
faculty travel and can we please shorten POSSE and/or make it remote? We've
now taken a stab at that and are gearing up for the following schedule in
Doha:

Day 1: POSSE intensive.

"What we've done is to split the existing curriculum into a one-day one-day
in-person kickoff session (~5 hours of instruction), and then require a
(remote) curriculum comprised of bite-sized modules. Note that each module
is capped at 5 hours of student work (usually around 2 hours of (IRC-based)
instruction + 3 hours of exploratory "homework"), for a total of 25 hours
for the core modules + 10 hours for electives (a minimum of 2 required).
Attendees finish with a "capstone" of attendance at a conference with a
significant TOS presence (SIGCSE, FIE, OSCON). Total time required: 40 hours
+ conference. It'll take more than a week - maybe it'll even take a year -
but this might be more flexible and manageable for academics." --Mel, on the
Teaching Open Source list last night

Day 2: We're going to create marketing materials for info sessions that
faculty can use to explain POSSE and Teaching Open Source at their
institutions. We've been getting feedback that these sorts of things were
lacking, so we thought we'd take this time to actually make them alongside
the Doha attendees. We'll also be incorporating feedback on the POSSE
intensive curriculum from the day before.

Day 3: I'm planning on doing some work looking back into Etherpad on this
day. My RSI is still acting up, though, so I have the challenge of figuring
out how to contribute to Fedora without typing... creative suggestions
welcome. I'm thinking I might use this as an opportunity to work on my
speaking and presentation skills.

What you can do to help:

Look at the POSSE intensive curriculum (
http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE_modules) and let us know
whether these classes sound like something you'd be interested in taking
(remotely), or classes you wish you could offer to other people getting
started in their contributions to open source. Basically, are we on the
right track to teaching the right things, and describing them attractively?

Thanks,

-s
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