Hi Dave,
> I was hoping I could pick your brains for some ideas.... I will have a
> *single* class period to teach a small class (about 20) of *non-majors*
> about open source. For context, the course is about technology and
> public policy, and the students do not all have a strong technology
> backgrounds (many of them have backgrounds in social sciences and other
> fields related to public policy), although they have all taken at least
> a single introductory programming course before this one.
>
> Beyond the obvious "what is open source?", etc. What other sorts of
> things do you think would be valuable for these non-majors working at
> the intersection of tech and public policy to know about open source?
I've taught at the conceptual intersection you're describing here and found it
to be a very rich and rewarding space for conversation. Students studying public
policy tend to care about issues of transparency, access, governance,
distribution of resources, etc., so I've used concepts like these as points of
entry into a discussion of open source as a mechanism for enforcing a particular
vision of society. Students have responded well to deep dives, e.g., into both
the free software and open source definitions, because they establish conceptual
parameters for what morphs into policy. You might consider pairing the
discussion with something from Lawrence Lessig ("Code is Law," "Free Culture"),
as his writing operates at this intersection, tends to be short and accessible,
and speaks a language these students are already speaking.
While I appreciate others' suggestions regarding introductions to tooling and
infrastructure, I've found that these are not always of interest to complete
novices, nor are they typically necessary for imparting the basics of *what*
open source is and *why* it exists. Students seriously interested in learning
more (even participating) will eventually begin asking the *how* question, which
is when tooling and infrastructure become most pressing for them.
So my recommendation is to begin with higher-level topics, focusing on the
social, cultural, and economic implications of open source as a concept, seeing
how students respond from the standpoint of governance, licensing and policy.
BB
_______________________________________________
tos mailing list
tos@teachingopensource.org
http://lists.teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
TOS website: http://teachingopensource.org/
