15 Jul
2014
15 Jul
'14
12:58 p.m.
Hi Paul,
On 15 Jul 2014, at 11:43, Paul Libbrecht wrote:
Scott,
being both sides, in academia and in development, I find this idea surely worthwhile and
I started asking around how we could account for this in our university. What kind of
recognition do you expect on the university side?
There is a process that the participating universities have been following to ensure that
there is an appropriate assessment and/or accreditation scheme in place. In some cases
this is linked to ECTS credit for industrial placements, in others to the assessment used
for student projects.
(For example we've worked with universities on how they can assess different parts of
the work - e.g. the proposal itself, community engagement activity, self-reflective
reporting - rather than just code, or incorporating it into a body of larger work outside
of the project contribution itself. )
Also, I would urge both sides, particularly fellow developers, to make sure tha they are
properly informed of the academic-mentor's expectations. I understand from the
mechanism, such a discussion would happen at time of evaluating the proposals, correct?
That is correct; we ensure that mentors and academic supervisors are connected so they can
set expectations. This relationship is a critical part of making this work.
(Potentially it can mitigate one of the weaknesses of GSoC which is where students
"disappear" or don't seem motivated as the mentor has someone else close to
the student who they can contact to do the "chasing" instead of them.)
I fear that academic development is commonly
kilometers away from common sustainable development expected in open-source communities.
However, they would, in this project, be closer to the learning of the students, which has
been a common weak-points of GSoC.
Yes, there is a lot of learning that needs to happen on the institutional side :)
Scott, how much competition do you expect among students?
Not much for this pilot programme - if you would like to get your students involved, mail
me off-list and we can discuss.
Cheers
S
thanks
paul
On 14 juil. 2014, at 18:36, Scott Wilson <scott.bradley.wilson(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone,
I'm working with an initiative similar to Google Summer of Code, called Semester of
Code, and I think it would be great to have students work on XWiki. Below is more detailed
information, but basically its like GSoC, except students are involved as part of their
courses or industrial placements, so receive academic credit rather than money for their
work.
Hopefully this is of interest to the XWiki community!
If any questions aren't answered by the FAQ[1] or invitation below, feel free to
ask.
All the best,
- Scott
~~~
The VALS Semester of Code [1] project is working with European universities and FOSS
communities to give students real-world experience working in open source software
projects while receiving academic credit. The benefit to your projects will be valuable
and hopefully ongoing contributions. VALS will also benefit the wider sector by helping to
produce graduates with the skills and experience needed to engage with open development.
Our first Semester of Code will involve approximately 75 student placements, starting in
September. We would like to invite your organisation to participate in this pilot by
offering mentored placements within your projects.
If you have participated in Google Summer of Code before, you will find our process
similar; we will seek placements for student projects, and will use the a system similar
to Google's Melange platform to manage placements. However, VALS differs from Summer
of Code in that instead of receiving money for their participation, students will receive
academic credit. For this reason the mentors from your project will need to liaise with
the student's academic tutor. The VALS project will support this process to ensure it
runs as smoothly as possible. We also ensure the admin overhead is minimal.
The VALS initiative is a partnership of European universities and SMEs who have been
working for several months to plan the pilot of Semester of Code, which will run during
the next academic year. We have now reached the stage where we are signing up FOSS
projects who are willing to provide mentors. We have already seen interest from smaller,
single-company projects to larger software foundations, and would like to see more.
If you'd be willing to provide one or more mentored projects, we’d love to talk to
you about joining Semester of Code. In return, you’ll get an enthusiastic student
providing a valuable contribution to your project. The VALS team will be on hand
throughout the project to answer any questions and help unblock communication issues
between mentors, students and academic supervisors.
To join in the Semester of Code or to simply find out more you can email
mark.johnson(a)it.ox.ac.uk, or you can sign up to our mailing list directly by using the web
form [1].
More detail about the Semester of Code are available on our FAQ page [2]. If you have any
other questions, don’t hesitate to ask on the mailing list, and one of the VALS team will
get back to you!
1: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=VALS-SOC&A=1
2: http://semesterofcode.com/?p=22
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