Foundation:Planning:Education

This page still in very early draft mode. Comments and contributions encouraged.

Open source projects help contributors learn incredibly useful skills: how to code; how to collaborate; how to lead in a global community. Despite this, formal links between higher education and open source projects like Mozilla are rare. College and university students who want to take advantage of the resources and mentorship that come with open source development have to do so on their own time.

Working with others around the world, Mozilla Education wants to help change this: we want to build systematic links between our projects and the world of education. Over the long haul, we hope that this will help to drive a new wave of participatory, student-led learning in fields like computer science, design and business. In the shorter term, we believe that we can provide students with rich learning opportunities while at the same time generating new ideas and contributors for Mozilla.

The idea is to provide content, mentorship and community infrastructure that make it easier for students, professors and universities to contribute to and learn from Mozilla. At the simplest level, this could include online 'bootcamps' and easy-to-start coding projects for students who want to build an independent study credit around Mozilla. At a larger level, it could involve university departments building significant ongoing programming with Mozilla. What actually happens will depend on where students, educators and Mozillians decide to take this.

Overview

Vision

Working with computer science, design and business schools around the world, we aim to create learning opportunities for a new generation of Mozilla community members and help to drive a new wave of participatory, student-led learning.

Thesis

We have a broad thesis about how Mozilla can contribute to and benefit from engagement with the world of education:

Systematically creating opportunities for students and other learners to immerse themselves in Mozilla projects will a) produce rich learning outcomes for the participants and b) garner new ideas and contributors for Mozilla. Over time, this will contribute to the broad adoption of participatory learning approaches based on involvement in open source communities.

These are big ideas. We can't test fully test them in one go. However, we can ask a number of questions over the coming months that will help us understand whether this is an area worth a significant investment of time and money:

1. Can we replicate something roughly similar to our Seneca experience, getting another college or university to run community-based Mozilla courses, or is Seneca a unique case? If we can, how much time and resources are required?
2. Can we leverage skills, knowledge and other resources at Seneca to create a sustainable platform that students everywhere can use to learn with and contribute to Mozilla? If yes, will students use it?
3. Can we accelerate our efforts in education by setting up our own online courses for Mozilla volunteers and others? If so, do we get good participation and learning outcomes?
4. Will more students and professors use Mozilla educational materials if we create and promote a single place where they can be found (education.mozilla.org)? What if we promote these materials on other courseware portals?

Our plan for the first three quarters of 2009 is to start running real programs at a modest scale to help us answer these questions. Towards the end of 2009, we will evaluate to see if we should go further.

Context

There has been much talk over the last few years about the link between open source and education. Key things to note include:

• MIT and many others have released 'open source' versions of their course content and materials.
• David Wiley at BYU and many others have started promoting participatory pedagogy that builds on the culture and tools of the internet.
• Some people have started talking about an 'open education movement' that combines open courseware with participatory teaching and learning.
• Open source software has been rolled out widely by schools in Russia, Brasil and the Extremadura region of Spain.

Despite all of this buzz about 'open' and 'education', there have been few projects that have focused on the fact that participating in open source development is itself a rich, participatory learning experience. Some exceptions are:

• Seneca College in Toronto has integrated participation in Mozilla, Fedora and OpenOffice into its computer studies programs.
• The National University of Singapore has taught a Mozilla class on the Seneca model.
• Smaller, university-based software projects like AVOIR have grown up with significant participation from students.
• A group of small liberal arts institutions in the US is exploring integrating FOSS into the undergraduate curriculum, with support from the National Science Foundation.
• OSS Watch in the UK has submitted a 'FOSS Education' proposal to the JISC to develop an open education curriculum and mentoring programme embedding open source mentoring into computer science and work based learning (funding decision due at the end of February 2009).
• The osie-list mailing list is a forum for people interested in open source in education and the development of an open source-centric computer science curriculum.
• What else? Please add additional examples.

It's in this area that Mozilla Education wants to focus -- making a direct link between organized learning opportunities and the learning that comes from participating in Mozilla development. While we've already had some success in our collaborations with Seneca, we've also faced challenges:

• We haven't yet been able to replicate the Seneca model directly. The barrier to entry for this model -- the right professor, a supportive institution, local Mozilla support -- is quite high.
• Students -- or even professors -- who want to build their own credit courses around Mozilla don't have any easy pathway to do so. The resources that have made it possible for Seneca students to succeed -- help navigating the community, a supportive community of other students, a pre-selected list of useful projects to work on -- are not easily available to students not taking Seneca courses.
• While Mozilla has many useful learning resources for self-learners, there is no simple way to find materials that lend themselves to inclusion in formal courses. A number of course resources like this exist, but they are not well packaged or easy to find.

In 2009, we plan to run experimental programs aimed at overcoming these challenges. If we can make progress, there may be a case for Mozilla to more actively promote and scale its efforts in the education field.

2009 pilots and experiments

Prior to 2009, the primary Mozilla activity related to education was financial and staff support of Mozilla-related activities at Seneca College. Our proposed plan for 2009 is to expand the scope of Foundation activities through a series of pilots and experiments related to Mozilla education. These include:

• Evolving the Mozilla-related mentorship, online community and student project sourcing resources developed at Seneca to support non-Seneca faculty and students, making it easier for more people to 'study with Mozilla' and to bring the Seneca experience back to their own institutions.
• Establishing a prototype Mozilla course at a European university as a first step to creating a second instance of a effective Mozilla education program within a formal academic setting. Ideally this will be financially self sustaining.
• Moving beyond the formal academic environment by reaching out to self-directed learners, including new Mozilla volunteers, existing Mozilla community members desiring to know more about topics beyond their direct experience, and Mozilla-interested students at institutions not currently offering Mozilla-related courses.
• Piloting an 'education.mozilla.org' site (or section of an existing mozilla.org site) as a central place for course-friendly Mozilla resources and other materials relevant to education. The aim here is to leverage and promote existing and emerging Mozilla Education materials.

Most of these activities are very Mozilla-specific -- our immediate goal is to better understand how Mozilla can contribute and benefit in the education space. However, the aim is not to do this alone or in isolation. OSS Watch, Red Hat and many others are also trying to make links between open source and higher education. We plan to work closely with these other initiatives wherever possible, collectively helping to create new participatory learning models based on involvement in open source communities.

Seneca Expansion / Virtual Seneca - Toronto and Online

[We need a better title for this.]

The Seneca Expansion / Virtual Seneca initiative is intended to open up Seneca College's existing Mozilla-related resources to students and faculty at other institutions. Specifically, this will include:

• Updated and well packaged version of Real World Mozilla, a one week bootcamp / intro for computer studies students who want to participate in Mozilla projects.
• Online mentorship and guidance for students and professors who want to do their own ad hoc Mozilla courses, either on an independent study basis or as small classes.
• Ability to participate in and contribute to Seneca's online community for students: the #seneca IRC channel, OpenSource@Seneca blog planet, project wiki, etc.
• Expanded wiki / web page that lists student-friendly projects, a critical resource in getting students involved in Mozilla. This will be actively maintained all year round by Seneca professors participating in Firefox, Thunderbird and (possibly) other Mozilla project triage calls.
• Help finding project mentors within Mozilla where needed (??)

With these resources in place, students and professors anywhere will find it easier to get involved in Mozilla. An individual student would have the resources to propose and undertake an independent study credit at her own university. A professor or Mozilla contributor would also be able to run pilot courses, just as Thunderbird developer Gary Kwong is doing at the National University of Singapore. Our hope is that expanding the reach of Seneca's resources will encourage self-organizing activities like these around the world. Ideally, other institutions will also contribute to and help run these resources over the long run.

Mozilla Technology Course - Madrid and Online

The Mozilla Technology Course [name still in flux] is an attempt to create a second instance (i.e., beyond Seneca) of a thriving and self-sufficient Mozilla education program within a formal academic setting. A proposed three-month course in Mozilla technologies sponsored by GSyC/LibreSoft/Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, it will be an initial experiment in Mozilla education in Europe, and will test the concept of a hybrid course combining classroom and online instruction.

[Pascal has good details on this project and it sounds promising. Frank is working to get more information from URJC and include here.]

Mozilla Community Courses - Online

The Community Courses initiative will create an ongoing series of online courses on topics where Mozilla a) has expertise and b) needs more skilled contributors. For the pilot phase, the approach would include:

• Short online courses on topics like: community marketing; open web technologies; localization; community management; design for open source projects. Our goal is to have up to three courses during the pilot period.
• Participants would be either new Mozilla volunteers or people who simply want to understand how Mozilla gets things done. Some might be students registered for an independent study program at their universities.
• Each course would build a learning framework around existing Mozilla activities and materials, with one or more Mozilla contributors leading the course. An academic partner at a college or university might co-lead a course, especially in areas like design where theory would be helpful.
• Students would be given small tasks / assignments to complete that a) offer a chance to contribute to Mozilla but b) don't create a lot of noise or require much community time and attention.

The immediate benefits of these courses include: a) better skills for participating Mozilla volunteers and b) a collection of course materials on key Mozilla topics. These are both useful assets in their own right, and will be valuable even if we just do one round of courses. Of course, we will also have developed a framework for offering Mozilla courses that can be used over again if there is demand and impact from the pilots.

[We need Mozilla people / teams who would benefit from running courses like this. If you are one of those people, contact Mark Surman or Frank Hecker. If you can bring the content, we can do a lot of the heavy lifting on organizing the course.]

education.mozilla.org

The education.mozilla.org (EMO) initiative will create a Mozilla Education library as a special section on a mozilla.org site (or, if warranted, a standalone site), offering openly licensed Mozilla-related educational materials that students and professors can use in their courses, pointers to Mozilla-related educational activities, and other information useful to anyone interested in Mozilla and education.

[Most if not all of the materials on the proposed site would be created as a byproduct of the other proposed activities. These materials could also be made available and promoted through existing OER portals. The Mozilla Education library would also provide a window into the other Mozilla education activities listed above.]

Accreditation for Participation

[We should have a discussion about whether we want to do something around working with academic partners to provide formal educational accreditation for things people have learned by working on Mozilla projects. There is interest in this area from a number of fronts.]

Related activities

As noted above, Mozilla is also committed to contribute to broader efforts to promote "teaching open source" -- using open source development methodologies and other participatory practices in an educational context. Other initiatives we know about include:

• The nascent "Teaching Open Source" site and related efforts to provide a cross-project view of resources and activities related to open source and education. [Emerging from Seneca.]]
• The proposed FOSS Education project under the auspices of OSS Watch at the University of Oxford.
• The "Integrating FOSS into the undergraduate curriculum" project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Our plan is to track and where appropriate participate in these projects, in order to take advantage of general resources that can be leveraged in a Mozilla-specific context, make contacts and alliances that might be useful to Mozilla, and promote the general topic of open source and education.

Resources and financial setting

This section is VERY DRAFT. Much discussion still needed.

The following human, financial, and other resources will be required for the above proposed initiatives; for more detail see the individual pages for each initiative.

• People resources
  • Program coordination. Provided by Mozilla Foundation staff and possibly staff from other Mozilla entities (e.g., Mozilla Europe)
  • Instructors. Typically provided by the participating institutions, although in some cases mentors may also serve as instructors.
  • Mentors. Provided primarily by Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Europe, with some participation possible from the general Mozilla community.
• Financial resources
  • Mozilla Foundation funding.
  • Other Mozilla organization sponsorship. This could include paying travel expenses for employees and contractors participating in education initiatives, helping pay for travel scholarships for faculty, etc.
  • Co-funding by institutional partners. This could cover instructor salaries and other expenses.
  • Other grants. It is possible that some funding could be secured through government or other grants. Typically these would be funneled through the participating institutions.
  • Student fees. Beyond fees from full-time students enrolled in participating institutions, there may be opportunities to charge fees to students enrolling in just the Mozilla-reated courses (for example, students whose employers could pay for this as part of general corporate training).
• Other resources
  • Mozilla-specific. Includes Mozilla infrastructure (e.g., Bugzilla), content (e.g., MDC), etc.
  • General. Includes general FOSS instructional content usable in a Mozilla context, FOSS software to support classroom and independent learning, etc.

Community process and participants

[This section is VERY DRAFT. Ideas and suggestions are welcome.]

Our intent is that the group of people involved in Mozilla education and related activities operate as a community within the wider Mozilla and open source communities, with processes and practices characteristic of those communities, including a commitment to working in public and being open to potential new contributors.

Possible practices might include:

• public online forum (e.g., mozilla.education)
• IRC channel (e.g., #education on irc.mozilla.org)
• planning wiki (part of education.mozilla.org?)
• scheduled teleconferences (e.g., weekly or biweekly)
• quarterly or bi-annual face-to-face meetings (e.g., combined with other events such as FOSDEM, Mozilla Summit, etc.)

Whatever the exact practices, the goal is to keep the group cohesive and focused on achieving steady progress.

The following people have been involved to one degree or another in Mozilla or general open source education activities, and are candidates for forming the initial core group:

Name	Background	Affiliation	Role / interest
Pascal Chevrel	Mozilla community	Mozilla	coordinate European activities, mentor
Ross Gardler	educator / Apache community	University of Oxford	OSS Watch FOSS Education project
Frank Hecker	Mozilla community	Mozilla	coordinate Foundation activities
Dave Humphrey	educator / Mozilla community	Seneca College	module owner for education?
Gary Kwong	Mozilla community	Mozilla	teaching Mozilla courses, mentor
Jason Orendorff	Mozilla community	Mozilla	mentor
Gregorio Robles	educator	Universidad Rey Juan Carlos	teaching Mozilla courses
Paul Rouget	Mozilla community	Mozilla	mentor
Philipp Schmidt	educator	University of the Western Cape	open education
Mark Surman	[what to put?]	Mozilla	Foundation executive director
David Wiley	educator	Brigham Young University	open education

[Please add your own name if you are interested in participating in this effort, or suggest others who might be interested.]

Roadmap

[This section is VERY DRAFT. Much discussion still needed.]

[More detailed roadmaps for each experiment / pilot will be included on the related pages.]

[Open question: Is a roadmap process tied to the Foundation's fiscal year and the calendar year going to work for projects done in cooperation with institutions working to an academic year calendar? How much lead time will we need to have significant influence over what an institutions rolls out in the fall semester?]

Q1 2009

• Present proposed plan to the Mozilla Foundation board.
• Revise plan as necessary based on board or other feedback.
• Select projects to execute on, prepare final proposals, and secure commitments for funding and/or staff time.

• Prepare a detailed task list for Seneca activities.
• Generate a list of course topics for Mozilla community courses, recruit instructors and mentors for Mozilla community courses, begin course design
• Get a definitive go/no-go decision on URJC participation and plans for a Mozilla Technology course.
• Deploy an initial EMO prototype as a page on www.mozilla.org with a basic set of links and resources.

• Hold an EduCamp meeting in association with FOSDEM conference in early February to discuss Mozilla and other open source education initiatives in Europe.
• Make contacts and have discussions with the OSS Watch FOSS Education project, the institutions involved in the "Integrating FOSS into undergraduate curriculum" activities, and others involved in general "teaching open source" activities.

End of quarter checks:

• Do we have detailed plans and budgets for all proposed activities?
• Do we have agreement on plans and institutional commitments at Seneca and URJC?
• Do we have qualified people committed to work on the Mozilla community courses?

Q2 2009

• Do an academic year-end review of Seneca program, including
  • progress on generating lists of student projects from Bugzilla
  • state of participation in #seneca, Seneca wiki, etc., by non-Seneca students and faculty
  • state of development of packaged course material for "Real World Mozilla", etc.
• Evaluate progress on the Mozilla Technology course and its readiness for going live in Q3.
• Hold at least two Mozilla community courses.
• Evaluate the usefulness of the EMO prototype (e.g., based on traffic, content, comparison with related sites) and plan how it might evolve. (In particular, whether it remains a portal only or should take on other functions.)
• Make decisions on where and how we might work together with others involved in "teaching open source" activities and commit to a set of plans.

End of quarter checks:

• To what extent did we achieve the goal of expanding Seneca activities to include and/or support non-Seneca institutions and people (e.g., per the checklist above)?
• Is everything in place to have a successful first course at URJC?
• What worked with the first Mozilla community courses, and should be repeated for subsequent courses? What needs to be changed, and how?
• Do we have a solid plan for evolving EMO, including detailed budget and task lists? (Or, if we decide EMO is not the way to go, do we have a solid plan for how to meet the need we thought we were meeting with EMO?)

Q3 2009

• Work on Seneca initiatives in preparation for new academic year.
• Mozilla Technology course begins.
• Hold three Mozilla community courses (one per month)
• Work on the next phase of EMO.

End of quarter checks:

• Have all Seneca-related issues identified the earlier review been addressed going into the 2008-2009 academic year?
• What worked with the URJC Mozilla Technology course, and should be repeated for subsequent courses? What needs to be changed, and how? What is the logical next step for URJC and Mozilla?
• Is the pace of Mozilla community courses meeting the needs of the potential audience? What do we need more of? Less of?
• How useful is the new EMO functionality?

Q4 2009

• Evaluate the achieved scope of the Seneca program in the 2008-2009 academic year thus far vs. what was accomplished in the 2007-2008 academic year.
• Evaluate the success of the Mozilla Technology course and plan follow-on projects.
• Evaluate the success of Mozilla community courses, including the popularity of particular topics and whether the basic model of academic instructor plus mentor is working OK.

End of quarter checks:

• Seneca: See above.
• What further is needed from Mozilla and URJC to achieve Seneca-like success? Are there any quick wins? What needs to be done in order to achieve a significant step up in activity for 2009?
• Do any major tweaks need to be made to the Mozilla community courses for 2009? Should we bring all instructor duties inhouse (as part-time or full-time staff)?
• Is EMO important enough to evolve into a "first-class object" (e.g., comparable to SUMO, QMO, AMO, MDC) during 2009?

Beyond

xxx

Evaluation

This section is VERY DRAFT. Much discussion still needed.

As noted above the two hypotheses we wish to test are that we can

• produce rich learning outcomes for students
• garner new ideas and contributors for Mozilla

We potentially have multiple ways of testing whether students have rich learning outcomes:

• Student self-assessment. For example, we could survey students and ask them (among other things) to rate the value and relevance of their learning experience.
• Instructor assessment. For example, instructors (and mentors) could rate students on their demonstrated levels of enthusiasm, dedication, and achievement.
• Peer assessment. For example, students could nominate classmates for special recognition based on their overall contributions to the class experience.
• Student behavior. For example, we could look at the level of student involvement in class activities as measured by the amount of code checkins, bug comments, forum postings, IRC presence, etc.

We also have several possible ways to measure resulting new ideas and contributors:

• Mentor assessment. For example, we could ask mentors (and/or module owners and peers) to rate students and/or their projects based on their level of contribution to project goals.
• Contributor assessment. For example, we could ask Mozilla project contributors in general to nominate students and their projects for special recognition.
• New contributor metrics. For example, we could determine how many students achieve various contributor-related milestones (getting "canconfirm" status on bugs, having patches successfully reviewed and accepted, gaining commit access, etc.). If possible, we could compare students with a "control group" of contributors who came into the project through more traditional paths.

There are other dimensions on which we might evaluate our overall efforts, for example:

• Student participation. This would measure the overall reach of the program and the extent to which participating students take on more active roles within the project. More specifically, some potential measures include
  • Total number of students who participate to some degree.
  • Number of students who successfully complete at least one substantial project.
  • Number of students who continue participation past the end of their class(es).
  • Number of students who become core project contributors.
• Geographic reach. This would measure the extent to which we can achieve worldwide success in reaching potential student populations.
  • Number of countries with participating institutions.
  • Number of countries with participating students. (This assumes the possibility of some students participating outside a formal institutional framework.)
  • Number of languages in which instruction occurs and for which educational material is localized.
• Institutional adoption. This would measure the extent to which this paradigm is adopted within particular education institutions.
  • Number of instructors participating within given institutions.
  • Number of relevant classes within given institutions.
  • Number of students participating within given institutions.
• Breadth of offerings. This would measure the extent to which instruction occurs beyond just traditional computer science programs. For example, do we have participation by business schools? Design schools? And so on...