Education to foster the Open Source adoption

Time ago, I wrote something about the need for education in Computer Science and Free Open Source Software in this blog.

Now, I’m going to chair a panel about this topic at fOSSa 2010, at the end of an interesting education track open by a lightning talk by Roberto Di Cosmo.

In particular, the education track will deal with the role of academia in education, focusing on three main aspects: education of the teachers, education of all the university students, specific education of IT students teaching how to work in an environment that is more and more dominated by Free Open Source Software.

Many talks, by Gilles Dowek, Ralf Treinen, Jesus Barahona, Wouter Tebbens, Judith Benzakki, Albert Cohen and Alexandre Lefebvre will introduce a final debate.

My aim is to chair it, both as a traditional panel, asking some questions to any of the above-mentioned speakers, and partly as an unconference panel, involving as many people of the audience as possible. I think that asking questions in advance is a good means to prepare an interesting debate that will rise its end at the conference, and you can do it right now.

Personally, I want to introduce some questions of mine asking for your feedback. Do you like it? Would you like to add anything else? Are they really interesting? Help me in finding the right question for speakers and attendees. I’d like not to have an auto-referential panel, but a place to gather new ideas and proposals to be brought to people that have a role in education at different levels to foster the right way of FOSS promotion.

Here are some questions

to IT students

Which are the FOSS skills you need more? Technological ones, legal ones, community development, collaborative project management, others?

to students and professors

Which is the most useful subject to be taught at universities? FOSS technologies per-se? How to contribute in FOSS development? FOSS founding values? All of them?

Do you think the previous skills are specific only of a FOSS training course or a master, or should they be inserted into the traditional training program of IT courses?

to enterprises

What are your expectations about FOSS skills in hiring a student coming out from university? Do you care about IT skills only, or do you think that knowledge of FOSS specific aspects (legal, community development, collaboration, etc.) is valuable? Is it just valuable or crucial?

to everybody

How much the knowledge of FOSS by a group of skilled people (students, professors, entrepreneurs) must be supported by knowledge of FOSS values in the broader society? What should we practically do in order to support this dissemination?

I’ll stop here. Please comment, add more, where you like: on fOSSa forum, fOSSa linkedin group, my linkedin profile and, why not, on this blog!