Given the rapid growth of open source, it seems reasonable to expect that undergraduate students in computer science or software engineering programs would graduate with an understanding of open source and the ability to make project contributions. However, most students are not being taught core tools and concepts such as licenses, version control, and issue trackers as part of their degree program.

This special episode of Community Central shares the results of recent research anthropologist Matt Bernius conducted for Mozilla on the state of undergraduate education around open source software. Matt will also discuss the gap between undergraduate computing education and community expectations, and explore both the reasons for the gap and approaches to bridging it.

The video below is part of an internal webcast we host from the Open Source and Standards team, but we thought given the topic and its importance, it was well worth sharing with everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVNXGufghR8

Image by pxhere, under CC0 Public Domain license.


About the author

Brian Proffitt is Senior Manager, Community Outreach within Red Hat's Open Source Program Office, focusing on enablement, community metrics and foundation and trade organization relationships. Brian's experience with community management includes knowledge of community onboarding, community health and business alignment. Prior to joining Red Hat in 2013, he was a technology journalist with a focus on Linux and open source, and the author of 22 consumer technology books.

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