Re: KDE Program for a FLOSS-oriented CS curriculum

On 04/28/2015 07:10 PM, Sandro Andrade wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I've been thinking about the process by which newcomers start doing
> their contributions in KDE. In spite of some minor exceptions, I guess
> undergraduate students are still the majority of such potential
> contributors. However, different universities around the world vary
> from zero to very intense incentives not only to the adoption but also
> to focus their academic activities towards FLOSS applications.
>
> Certainly many possible causes for such zero adoption of FLOSS in
> universities are out of our immediate control, but I think we have
> chances for addressing another ones. What I've seen, at least in
> Brazil, is that most CS professors are either not interested in FLOSS
> or perhaps interested but completely unaware about how things work and
> how they would correlate FLOSS with the subjects taught in their
> courses.
>
> Cutting right to the chase, I was wondering if the availability of a
> high quality and comprehensive "KDE Program for a FLOSS-oriented CS
> curriculum" would help in any way the number of CS students doing
> their work using KDE software. In practical terms, we initially would
> have to agree on a common CS curricula (hopefully that is expected to
> be easily identified) and then document, for each curriculum
> component, the KDE technologies that would be either inspiring sources
> for analysis or potential cases to apply, as contributions, concepts
> related to that curriculum component.
>
> Some examples:
>
> - For a "Data Structure" and "Graph Theory" courses: we  would
> document possible contributions in Rocs or the main implementation
> aspects of Qt container classes.
> - For a "Design Patterns" and "Software Architecture" courses: we
> would describe how patterns have been used across KDE software and the
> tactics adopted in outstanding architectures of applications like
> KDevelop, Qt Creator, Plasma, KF5, and many others.
> - For a "Software Quality" and "Project Management" courses: we would
> explain the quality assurance process adopted in Qt and KDE
> communities, along with the tools, standards, and procedures that
> support the process.
> - For a "Computer Graphics and Image Processing" course: we would
> point out contributions possibilities in kdenlive, krita, and so on.
> - For a "Compilers and Programming Paradigms" course: we could explore
> the grantlee parser automata and/or the QML interpreter.
>
> The ultimate goal would be having a detailed set of guidelines about
> how to adopt KDE as a central case study in CS courses. Obviously,
> that would require some time investment and the help of those of you
> who knows a lot about KDE solutions.
>
> By now, I would like to hear from you about two initial questions:
>
> 1) Do you experience this same scenario in your countries/universities
> and consider this problem 'pervasive' enough to demand a global
> endeavour from our community ?

Yes, in the U.S. I have experienced the response of CS professors that 
you describe in Brazil. Many of them have only a vague idea of FLOSS and 
little or no interest in providing anything for students. CS students 
however are running Linux (most commonly Ubuntu or Mint) on their own 
machines and may occasionally have access to servers with Linux.

Not sure what the issue is. It appears that the universities I know 
about are more interested in putting out a mainstream product, using 
mainstream products and not so much interested in freely and openly 
educating people. Professors teach Microsoft; students buy Apple.

I've had many hours of discussion with professors here about FLOSS. I am 
skeptical of any effort to try to understand them better. It would take 
a long time, generate marginally useful information and not provide much 
guidance about how to proceed with a program.

All that said, I really like the idea and would support it. I could 
probably get some people to work with it...maybe not professors, but 
definitely student leaders.


>
> 2) Do you think such a 'KDE Program' is worth and would help in
> fostering the adoption of KDE in universities and in alleviating some
> initial contribution barriers ?

Again relating to my limited exposure to a handful of universities...no.

I don't think that it would make as much difference as other 
possibilities (recruiting to Google Summer of Code, Season of KDE, 
Outreach Program for Women). I think that some combination of the 
opportunity to do real work on KDE projects along with the social 
benefits that we provide would be attractive, especially to women.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/opinion/how-to-attract-female-engineers.html?_r=0

Carl

>
> Cheers,
> --
> Sandro
>
> _______________________________________________
> This message is from the kde-promo mailing list.
>
> Visit https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-promo to unsubscribe, set digest on or temporarily stop your subscription.
>


_______________________________________________
This message is from the kde-promo mailing list.

Visit https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-promo to unsubscribe, set digest on or temporarily stop your subscription.