F/OSS curriculum development

WP4 partners shall work together in order to define one or more broadly accepted, detailed curricula for F/OSS. We will focus in particular on items 2 and 3 below (courses and curricula about F/OSS operating system Linux related system applications, and courses and and F/OSS software development tools), not excluding studying and giving suggestions on items 1, 4 and 5.

The initial attention will be directed to courses that could be offered in a high school and university computer science/computer engineering departments. This because we believe that they are a key factor for F/OSS success, being today’s students tomorrow's professionals. Moreover, convincing schools of the goodness of the F/OSS approach, and of the fact that it is fruitful to invest in it, is perhaps easier than convincing end-users organisations or firms.

The Workgroup will discuss and elaborate on the content inventory and propose various course topics and corresponding curriculum. This curriculum planning will provide a solid foundation for students in high school with grade 10-12 and university students (year 1-4). The workgroup will include technology coordinators, curriculum planners, instructional technologists, teachers and students with technical training in the Linux operating system. It will support and disseminate the utilization of F/OSS technology in education and promote the critical technology and career competencies that computer industry increasingly demands.

The project plans to strengthen the relationship between educational institutes and the business community by organizing events between industry mentors, students, technology executives and teachers. This because it would not be sensible to develop a curriculum “in vacuum”, but strong collaboration with software industry is of the utmost importance for the success of the workpackage. Additionally, especially university students will benefit from different aspects and philosophies of technology planning and development with the help of this curriculum.

Main curriculum development items are as follows

• Courses and curricula about using the most popular F/OSS desktop applications - F/OSS office automation software, mail applications, Web browsers, Wiki's, etc. - even on proprietary operating systems.

• Courses and curricula about F/OSS server application & management - Linux operating system – Application Server (Tomcat), Web Server (Apache), databases, middleware, and related system applications.

• Courses and curricula about F/OSS software development tools – IDE (Eclipse), Versioning System and related tools.

• Courses and curricula about how to develop and take advantage of F/OSS software ? the software engineering of F/OSS. They are related to ongoing research on methodologies and tools for F/OSS development, and aim to train software developers able to build, customize and consult on F/OSS applications, being active members of the F/OSS development community.

• Use of F/OSS software in computer science courses and curricula, as a cheap and powerful mean to help understanding the computer science concepts.