[Campus-hartnell-staff] planning another Open Source Comes to Campus event for the fall

[Shauna Gordon-McKeon]

Hello all,

Katie will be organizing another Open Source Comes to Campus event at
Hartnell this fall, so we're reviving this list.  I don't imagine it will
get *too* busy, but feel free to unsubscribe yourselves if you don't want
to be subject to it.  (If you want to volunteer at the event but not get
emails until they're relevant to you, just sent me a quick email and we'll
arrange that for you.)

Okay, from a previous thread:



What is the second cohort a cohort of?
>

So it sounds like there are approximately 90 potential students - the old
> CSIT cohort, the new CSIT cohort, and the CSUMB cohort.
>

All cohorts are computer science students.

Cohort breakdown (sorry that it's pretty confusing):

   - Year 2 CSIT-In-3 (Students attend Hartnell and CSUMB for 3 years) -
   ~34 students
   - Year 1 CSIT-In-3 (Students attend Hartnell and CSUMB for 3 years) -
   ~29 students
   - Year 1 CSIT++ (Students attend CSUMB only for 4 years, will not take
   programming their first semester) - ~30 students


That's not too confusing!  :)  So there's 59 freshmen, and 34 students who
mostly attended the workshop last spring.



> There are a few things to consider:
>
> - For those who already attended an event, how to both tap their
> experience to help completely-new students as well as give them new
> material/opportunities.
> - if you think you're likely to have a high percentage turn out, which
> groups to focus on.  While 60 may be on the edge of doable, if we have a
> big enough space and adopt a pairing/small group model, 90 seems pretty
> overwhelming.  Your suggestion of having an event for 1-2 cohorts in the
> fall and 1-2 in the spring seems like a good approach, but there may be
> other options.
>

A couple thoughts come to mind, as far as brainstorming:

   - Worth noting: We are very freshmen heavy, because of the two new
   cohorts, which will have high percentage turnout, and also because the
   number of incoming CS freshmen has shot up at both Hartnell and CSUMB.
   - Freshmen at CSUMB are encouraged to do general ed first, so very few
   freshmen there will take a CS course their first semester, unfortunately.
   CSIT-In-3 and Hartnell students will be taking a not very rigorous CS0
   course.
   - With the above in mind, perhaps the Fall semester event could be
   focused on general familiarity with open source, and include activities
   like Wikipedia editing/related discussion of version control, a general
   idea of how FOSS communities operate (idea behind bug trackers, tickets,
   IRC, mailing list, etc), and basic command line. Then, the spring could be
   a typical OSCTC event.

Our newest attempt to make the contributions workshop easier/better will be
focused on specific tasks that are easier for newcomers to do.  These
involve:
* testing installation instructions and giving feedback to projects
* reproducing bugs & doing code review of patches
* usability testing
* filling issues related to accessibility and making small changes (if
that's within the contributors' skill set)

All of these can be done with limited to no programming background, which
means there will be plenty of opportunities for your students.  We'll also
continue to have the traditional workshop format that you experienced last
spring, with bugs for students who want to "dive right in".  (There may
also be a third option with "deep dives" into specific projects such as
Mozilla but it's not clear precisely where that's going yet.)



   - Maybe in conjunction with the above idea, or on its own, perhaps
   experienced students can be encouraged to attend the second half of the
   event, when contributions are taking place. Then they can help younger
   students who decide to stay during the contribution phase, as well as make
   their own contributions with support of mentors.
      - During the last event, only a small group stayed past when they
      were required in order to make a contribution. With this model, perhaps
      more can be encouraged to stay, but those who do leave make space for the
      older students. At this stage, will a larger number be more manageable?


   - If we don't make these activities required, we'll probably get a
   60-80% attendance rate for cohort students, instead of 100%. Attendance for
   non-cohort students will probably be what you see at other schools.


60% attendance of 59 students is 35, 80% is 47.  That's high but
potentially doable.  Can you get the space?  The other issue is mentors.
 How high a student:mentor ratio is too high?  We recommend 4-5:1 but have
run with as many as 10:1.

Another option is to ask students from last spring to mentor in the
morning.  Some may feel like they're not "experienced" enough to help so we
would probably want to spell out exactly what they'd do, remind them that
other more experienced mentors will be available to back them up, and
generally encourage them to take a chance.  :)

- Shauna
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