Have students create their own free & open-source software as a project to increase motivation and meet learning objectives.

  • Reasons:
    • Meeting a real need with their software can be a powerful motivator for students.
    • Students learn to collaborate with potential users or clients in the process of completing the project.
    • Needing to distribute software to real clients teaches students current software development tools and techniques.
  • Actions:
    • Assign a project to write and distribute software that can be used by others to perform a task or meet a need.
    • Design the project to be completed in one semester.
    • Publish the deliverables of the project so that users outside of your institution or class can download, use, and modify them.

More about this tip

External Source

Allen B. Tucker
From: Panel: Using Open Source Software to Engage Students in Computer Science Education
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/221538187_Using_open_source_sof…