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I agree. Further, to the extent that students need to learn "Jira-fu, unit testing, peer reviewing, etc." they can learn this in a controlled environment run by

I agree. Further, to the extent that students need to learn "Jira-fu, unit testing, peer reviewing, etc." they can learn this in a controlled environment run by the university. The problem with trying to have all students (not "some exceptional students", but all students) going out and engaging with the real world of open source is that the degree of difficulty in navigating different open source projects is enormous and may not be obvious to the professors nor students ahead of time. Some students may wind up working on projects with nice guard-rails, helpful communities, plenty of up-to-date high-quality documents for how to contribute. Others... maybe not so much. It will be very hard to judge whether students have been successful and to compare their performances against each other (a perennial chore of academia, but one that people seem to insist on: grades!).

alisonkisk 5y ago
the students should be supervised by their teacher.
watwut 5y ago
And also, open source maintainers are not free teachers. If university expects them to teach students, university first should ask open source maintainers whether they are ok with it. Otherwise it creates absurd situation in which highly expensive institution is demanding that part of teaching is done by third parties for free.
- ivirshup 5y ago
  As an open source maintainer, I'm happy to have contributions from first time contributors, even if they aren't completley familiar with the workflow. It's how I learned, and I'd love be able to pass this experience on. That said, I would love if the professor would reach out so I could recommend specific issues and let them know whether I'll be particularly available for more in depth PR mentoring this semester. It does seem like they're accounting for the burden put on maintainers as well: > Getting a contribution accepted is not a prerequisite for passing the assignment > a small-scale contribution is the only realistic goal. The key to making the course's assignment work, is to have what are, on first sight, very low ambitions for the students' contributions.

alisonkisk 5y ago

the students should be supervised by their teacher.

watwut 5y ago

And also, open source maintainers are not free teachers. If university expects them to teach students, university first should ask open source maintainers whether they are ok with it. Otherwise it creates absurd situation in which highly expensive institution is demanding that part of teaching is done by third parties for free.

ivirshup 5y ago
As an open source maintainer, I'm happy to have contributions from first time contributors, even if they aren't completley familiar with the workflow. It's how I learned, and I'd love be able to pass this experience on. That said, I would love if the professor would reach out so I could recommend specific issues and let them know whether I'll be particularly available for more in depth PR mentoring this semester. It does seem like they're accounting for the burden put on maintainers as well: > Getting a contribution accepted is not a prerequisite for passing the assignment > a small-scale contribution is the only realistic goal. The key to making the course's assignment work, is to have what are, on first sight, very low ambitions for the students' contributions.