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-boun...@teachingopensource.org [mailto:tos-boun...@teachingopensource.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Jadud Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 9:43 AM To: tos@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 _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
