lem-solving activity. Being engaged in real-world projects with teams of developers, students see that programming is part of a complex, team-ori-ented, creative process that produces software to benefit society. Working closely with real clients, they see the need for transparent and secure code, extensive testing, and writing excellent user manuals and other supporting materials. They want to master these activities to improve their systems rather than step through mere academic exercises.

Another important HFOSS element is the ethic of sharing and collaboration. For this reason, the HFOSS Project teams students with one another, as well as with mentors, IT professionals, and HFOSS community members. The HFOSS development process has no room for lone programmers working in isolation.

Student feedback on these points reflects these observations. For example, one student said, “[this activity] shows how computer science can be a very helpful field of study than what we just know of it as programming in different programming languages.” Another said, “[this activity] definitely changed my views of how effective software projects can be run. If we work collectively for the greater good, then we can get much more done.”

The HFOSS Project has focused on individual courses and internships and only just begun to address how its approach might fit into an undergraduate curriculum. Reinforced throughout our experience is the longstanding view that computer science must be presented as a problem-solving discipline, and the more this value is built into the computing curriculum the more attractive it will be to a wider variety of bright students eager to solve problems. Georgia Tech and other institutions have begun exploring curricular models that contextualize programming within broader applications of computing ( http://www.in- sidehighered.com/news/2006/09/26/

gatech). The HFOSS approach would clearly complement such a model.

A common software industry complaint is that new computing graduates are strong on theory but lack practical understanding of the modern IT workplace. A common complaint

Logo of the humanitarian foss Project ( http://hfoss.org).

 

from academics is that IT professionals want colleges and universities to serve as training centers for their latest programming languages and software platforms. HFOSS addresses both by recruiting computing and IT professionals as advisers and mentors for its summer interns. For example, IT consultants from Accenture Corporation help mentor HFOSS students and serve as advisers in project management and other areas. Students appreciate the mentoring as they begin to understand the complexity of software development. They see that challenging problems rarely yield to “textbook” solutions and that the design process is often a protracted interaction between programmers and end users. One student said, “[this activity] definitely helped me understand more options of the IT profession. Now I know one more aspect of it, and how exciting it can be.”

 

Portable, sustainable model If the HFOSS model is to make a positive contribution to undergraduate computing curricula, it must continue to grow beyond the three campuses—Connecticut College, Trinity College, and Wesleyan University— where the Project began. During the past 18 months, with the support of the CPATH grant, we have seen evidence that such growth can be accomplished, as new HFOSS efforts began at Bowdoin College, Brunswick ME, and the University of Hartford, Hartford, CT. However, continued growth requires development of a supportive infrastructure and portable model

that is easily adopted by other institutions.

Part of the effort to build a sustainable HFOSS model must include faculty development. Toward this end, we held outreach workshops for faculty at SIGCSE08 in Portland, OR,

and CCSCNE08 in Staten Island, NY, ( http://www.cs.trincoll.edu/hfoss/ wiki/SIGCSE_2008_ Workshop) to promote the HFOSS model as something worth trying. Feedback from workshop participants indicates that the humanitarian and FOSS aspects of the effort both have substantial appeal to computing faculty. However, despite this basic appeal, many challenges remain before more than a few other schools are able to integrate HFOSS into their computing curricula:

Faculty development. As with any new pedagogical endeavor, developing a new approach to teaching software design requires considerable initiative, time, and support. Faculty need time to learn new languages and tools and become active in the HFOSS community on their own before they are able to introduce HFOSS into their courses. To support this endeavor we are planning a summer training experience for faculty, similar to the week-long NSF-funded Chautauqua workshops ( http://www.chautauqua. pitt.edu).

Software-tool support. Although FOSS software technology is free, creating a platform of FOSS tools to support a course or student project requires considerable time and effort. Faculty do not normally have time for downloading and installing software and making sure it works. One potential solution is a one-click installation that works on a variety of platforms. Another is for instructors to enlist such support among their universities’ IT staff. The HFOSS project has begun to develop resources and processes to help, including a set of free and open Web-based resources, software tools, and other support materials ( http://repository.hfoss.org).

Community development. Being involved in HFOSS means taking an active role in one or more HFOSS communities or projects, a process that can be somewhat bewildering and intimidating, especially for large well-established projects. We have identi-