Student Participation in HFOSS: Challenges and Opportunities

With the advent of cloud computing, containers, devops and other emerging IT technologies, there are increased opportunities for student learning. Many of these new technologies have their roots in open source as many of the major tools are open source such as Git (version control), Ansible (configuration management), Docker (containerization), and Jenkins (automation server). In addition, most major IT companies have a strategy for utilizing free and open source software (FOSS). Indeed, FOSS has become an important segment of the technology industry. Humanitarian FOSS (HFOSS) has the additional attraction of somehow benefiting the human condition. Given the rising emphasis on FOSS, it is important that IT students graduate with some understanding of FOSS. This poster presents an overview of HFOSS, summarizes recent research into student learning in HFOSS and also provides an overview of instructor experiences in teaching HFOSS.