[TOS] Senior capstone/exercise in FOSS question

[Heidi Ellis]

Hi Matt,

I've just finished teaching a senior-level Software Engineering course where
students made enhancements to the Caribou onscreen keyboard (for Assistive
Technologies in GNOME). The course [1] and schedule [2] including
deliverables are online.  You'll note that I made use of "Field Trips" from
the SoftHum site [3] and specifically the assignments [4]. I used our text
and Pfleeger. 

I used a fairly document heavy approach that had students complete a set of
templates based on IEEE standards, which are all online and available for
use [5]. There are also rubrics linked from that page. I used the documents
to give students a feel for what a requirements, specification, etc. look
like because these things don't exist in many (most?) OSS projects. I also
expect that they'll need this knowledge in a commercial environment. 

I used an approach similar to waterfall where students started with
requirements, went to design, on to implementation, etc.  There are a series
of approaches outlined on the SoftHum site [6] that provide other
approaches. One idea is to do two or more cycles of
requirements-specification-implementation-test. Use the first cycle to get
students accustomed to the documents and the steps (without really trying to
accomplish a lot from a code perspective). Then do another cycle where they
actually "do" something. 

I plan to continue on with a smaller (5) group of students in the spring.
But I'm still digging out from the fall semester and haven't done any
preparation for it. 

Let me know if you have any questions,
Heidi 

[1] http://mars.wnec.edu/~hellis/CS490/
[2] http://mars.wnec.edu/~hellis/CS490/syllabus.html
[3] http://www.xcitegroup.org/softhum/doku.php
[4] http://www.xcitegroup.org/softhum/doku.php?id=f:assignments
[5] http://www.xcitegroup.org/softhum/doku.php?id=f:templates





-----Original Message-----
From: tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org
[mailto:tos-bounces at teachingopensource.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Jadud
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 9:43 AM
To: tos at teachingopensource.org
Subject: [TOS] Senior capstone/exercise in FOSS question

Hi all,

I know a number of you have models at your institutions for this, so I
think what I'm asking for are URL pointers.

We have a required senior exercise at Allegheny.

http://sites.allegheny.edu/academics/senior-project/

Next term I'll have a 2-week module in our Junior Seminar within the
Comp Sci department, and I'd like to put forward a model for the
students that they might use to spend a year focusing on participating
in open source project. (My thought was to have them do an exercise
and some writing involving research into one or more communities that
they might contribute to. This conversation/series of exercises would
probably consume one of the two weeks. Greg's homework assignment re:
researching communities and openhatch.org will probably frame the
exercise that I give them.)

Currently, many of the students have a very positivist/Popperian model
of inquiry because of snippets of projects they typically see earlier
in the curriculum -- and as a result, they have a poor foundation for
collaboration-centric work. A reasonably well-defined model for FOSS
contribution in the senior year as a senior project seems like a nice
way for some students to dig into "something different" than what
they've seen before.

As an FYI, the senior project is only one course equivalent over the
span of the year -- that is, 1 CR in the fall and 3 CR in the spring.

I'll put my notes re: this up on the TOS wiki when we're done with
this thread. I assume there's some things going on at Seneca, Drexel,
and/or Western Conn that would fit this model? Any others? (I could do
all of the Googling myself, but I thought I'd start by asking instead,
because there might be things not found on the web that are important
to mention before I proceed with this course of action.)

Cheers,
Matt
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