| Follow @HeidiJCEllis
Western New England University
Heidi Ellis is Professor and Chair of the Computer Science and Information Technology department at Western New England University. She has a long-time interest in computing education and has been supporting student participation in open source software since 2006. Heidi also writes about students and open source at http://heidiellis.wordpress.com/
Authored Comments
Oh, agreed. Academia is one of the slowest moving entities, perhaps only slightly better than government :-) One of the goals of involving students in open source projects is to try to use the practical and real-world approach in open source development to teach computing, rather than teaching computing concepts that will be used open source or industry. Let students learn by example, so to speak.
Heidi
Hi Jason,
Good point! I know that students have definitely leveraged their open source experience to the positive when job hunting where the open source experience has been a draw on their resume. Unfortunately, I have also seen seniors drop out of open source participation after graduation to focus on job needs, especially if the company isn't as supportive of open source. What I am hoping happens is that these folks return to the open source world once they are established in their careers. I'm not sure how to support this transition from an academic standpoint.
Thank you for more thinking fodder!