[OSCTC-planning] mentorship and other ways to follow up with Open Source Comes to Campus attendees

Tue Jul 22 00:12:20 UTC 2014

+1
This looks really good! And I’m very much for increasing accessibility.  I have two blind students in my incoming freshman class and I’m discovering lots of pages and applications are not accessible. ☹

I've identified a few additional evergreen tasks that we're going to be folding in to OSCTC events, during the Contributions Workshop.  They include:

1) giving feedback on installation and setup, as you mentioned.  very rough draft off online guide is here: http://openhatch.github.io/open-source-comes-to-campus/lessons/newcomer-tasks/setup/#/
2) testing project websites for accessibility.  very rough draft is here: http://openhatch.github.io/open-source-comes-to-campus/lessons/newcomer-tasks/accessibility/#/
3) bug triage: going through trackers that need weeding and reproducing bugs, testing patches, and doing basic code review.  no draft yet, inspired by: https://openhatch.org/wiki/Triaging_Python_tickets
4)  user tests: working in pairs to do user tests of open source projects.  inspired by Jen Davidson's talk at OS Bridge.

I'm actually *really* thrilled about this model - I think it will solve a number of problems, including:
- helping students get quick wins
- finding concrete ways for OSCTC students to help projects, which I think will make more projects to want to engage with us and with the people approaching their projects
- teaching them a relatively project-independent task, which means they can contribute to a variety of projects that interest them (not just the ones we've picked for the event)
- providing a more structured contributions workshop, which many, many people have asked for

I also think there are additional newcomer tasks I haven't identified yet, so I'm looking forward to expanding this.

From: osctc-planning-bounces at lists.openhatch.org [mailto:osctc-planning-bounces at lists.openhatch.org] On Behalf Of Shauna Gordon-McKeon
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2014 11:15 AM
To: Planning for Open Source Comes to Campus
Subject: Re: [OSCTC-planning] mentorship and other ways to follow up with Open Source Comes to Campus attendees

On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 11:58 AM, Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah at panix.com<mailto:sumanah at panix.com>> wrote:
Hey, I'm sorry it's taken a while for me to say on list something I said
to Shauna earlier. This is rambly and not necessarily apposite but I
figure it's better to make sure I've said it here!

One Perl/OpenBSD person who'd just attended his first PyCon said:

https://twitter.com/AFresh1/status/454991682036314112

> The common theme I notice at #PyCon is the focus that community will
> bring technical excellence rather than the other way in #Perl and
> #BSD

which rings true to me.

I'm sure Mel can talk our ears off about cognitive apprenticeship,
legitimate peripheral participation,
http://blog.melchua.com/2012/04/12/cognitive-apprenticeship-case-studies-in-software-engineering/
and other key concepts in creating learning environments.

Are there some specific readings you'd suggest for legitimate peripheral participation?  Other than just generally reading Mel's blog, which I like to do as often as possible.  :)

I totally agree that socialization and identity formation are KEY in
helping people contribute to FLOSS, or develop any new hobby. I'd love
for us to research best practices in
missiology/Communism/Amway/dissident movements/skateboarding/garage
rock/Zumba/etc. so we could use them in FLOSS. We aren't the first to
need to do this.

Join the Club (http://www.amazon.com/Join-Club-Pressure-Transform-World/dp/0393341836) is a good book on this topic.  It focuses a great deal on building friendships and peer networks, which is why I've been thinking of having a mentorship program with a cohort model.  However I worry that it is difficult to build cohorts remotely.  If we can get enough students from the same geographical area, in person meetings might be an option...

Mentors in FOSS need to help mentees learn *what is normal* in a world
that's upside-down for most folks, and they need to be able to help
extremely diverse new folks bootstrap. (We aim to give people something
real to do as they bootstrap - what? There's one evergreen task that a
mentor can give - writing a discovery report on installation or new dev
environment setup or something like that
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/03/25/seeing-through-the-eyes-of-new-technical-contributors/
- and SpinachCon looks promising.)

I've identified a few additional evergreen tasks that we're going to be folding in to OSCTC events, during the Contributions Workshop.  They include:

1) giving feedback on installation and setup, as you mentioned.  very rough draft off online guide is here: http://openhatch.github.io/open-source-comes-to-campus/lessons/newcomer-tasks/setup/#/
2) testing project websites for accessibility.  very rough draft is here: http://openhatch.github.io/open-source-comes-to-campus/lessons/newcomer-tasks/accessibility/#/
3) bug triage: going through trackers that need weeding and reproducing bugs, testing patches, and doing basic code review.  no draft yet, inspired by: https://openhatch.org/wiki/Triaging_Python_tickets
4)  user tests: working in pairs to do user tests of open source projects.  inspired by Jen Davidson's talk at OS Bridge.

I'm actually *really* thrilled about this model - I think it will solve a number of problems, including:
- helping students get quick wins
- finding concrete ways for OSCTC students to help projects, which I think will make more projects to want to engage with us and with the people approaching their projects
- teaching them a relatively project-independent task, which means they can contribute to a variety of projects that interest them (not just the ones we've picked for the event)
- providing a more structured contributions workshop, which many, many people have asked for

I also think there are additional newcomer tasks I haven't identified yet, so I'm looking forward to expanding this.

Once I've one or more of the task guides polished, I'm going to make a blog post about the new model.

The people who are hesitant about applying to OPW/GSoC because they
don't know whether they are ready enough: some subset of those people
have impostor syndrome and need actual facts so they can measure
themselves against objective criteria. Maybe OH can help them
self-assess on FLOSS skills.

I definitely want to address impostor syndrome and other forms of psychological obstacles through the mentorship program.  It's perhaps my biggest priority.

Looking forward to hearing what others have to say,

rambly Sumana

--
Sumana Harihareswara
http://www.harihareswara.net/
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