Engaging Students in the Free Open Source Movement Through Civic Engagement

From Anita Borg Institute Wiki

Professors and students described a CS course and follow-up summer intern project that gives students real-world experience contributing to an open-source project that has some sort of “humanitarian” or “social service” aspect.

Skipping over the professors’ descriptions of the course for now, the most memorable part of this discussion came from the students, one of which had become a bit burnt out on CS courses and was thinking of switching majors until this project came around. Working on something that a) had real users, and b) accomplished something socially worthwhile, gave this student new inspiration and energy for continuing in computer science.

The open source projects these students contributed to are at http://hfoss.org and included an Android app for search and rescue missions, a medical record system easy to use for organizations with few technical resources, and a disaster management system.