[TOS] Creation of open source curriculum, open invitation

Heidi Ellis - Gmail heidijcellis at gmail.com
Wed Jul 2 18:46:31 UTC 2014


Hi Folks,

I draw your attention to the (somewhat defunct) group of folks interested in
teaching materials:

http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/Teaching_Materials_Project

And how does this relate to the existing text?

http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/Textbook

Just wanting to make sure that we don't reinvent the wheel. And yes, count
me in.
Heidi 

-----Original Message-----
From: tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org
[mailto:tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org] On Behalf Of Tom Callaway
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2014 1:53 PM
To: Discussions about Teaching Open Source
Subject: Re: [TOS] Creation of open source curriculum, open invitation

On 07/02/2014 12:41 PM, Matt Jadud wrote:
> Hi Joseph,
> 
> I'm interested (in a way), but it sounds like you might have 
> conflicting goals.
> 
> 1. A textbook is an artefact that brings a lot of words together. It 
> is "content." Books *sometimes* imply a curriculum.
> 
> 2. A curriculum (or course, module, etc.) is a value-, goal-, and 
> objective-driven educational process specification that has many 
> design facets that are not easily enumerated as "content."

Hi Matt, you're absolutely right. One of the things that we've heard in our
investigation on how to promote open source at the university level is that
in some places, a textbook is a useful artifact to accelerate the timetable
for having a curriculum (or course, module).

We want to built a core set of content (in an open source project) around
the core ideals of how open source works. Structuring that content with the
explicit goal of generating a textbook will hopefully enable and empower
people to setup courses and curriculum in their schools, around a
(hopefully) standard reference text.

I do think that we want to build out beyond the "textbook", but we're
starting there. We're definitely planning to empower this community to go
beyond that (and to take the bits of our content that they see as useful and
fork them and build other amazing things with them).

This is also not the only place that Red Hat wants to participate in and
invest in. We believe in POSSE, and we believe in the value of active
learning. We _hope_ that this content (whether in textbook format or simply
incorporated into existing material) will simplify the task of delivering an
engaging learning experience.

One of the other things that we heard was that course creation was very
personal, very individual, at least for the majority of successful ones,
that it involved the passion and talents of the educator creating an
experience that they knew worked (even if always being
refined/tweaked/overhauled). I did not want to be so arrogant as to state
that it would be possible/successful for us to create an entire
"prepackaged" course on Teaching Open Source (tm) that would be applicable.

It seemed more logical (to me) to start with the idea of generating (and
merging existing) common reference material ("the textbook") and providing a
community space for educators to discuss how they've built successful
classes/seminars/experiences around that.

Thanks,

~tom

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