CREATING OPEN EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT BASED ON

OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECTS

Alexander Petrenko, Vladimir Rubanov

Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISPRAS), Russian Federation

Olga Petrenko

Moscow Institute for Open Education, Russian Federation

Keywords: Open education, Lifelong learning, Open source projects, Software engineering.

Abstract: The paper discusses principles of open education as the main method of effective education style for

talented students. It is shown how open-source software development projects can naturally implement

these principles for teaching software engineering courses. This is proved by examples of successful open

education environments created at the System Programming sub-faculties of the two Russian top-ranked

universities - Moscow State University and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (Phystech). These

sub-faculties are run jointly with the Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of

Sciences, the leading Russian research & development government organization in the field of software

engineering.

1 INTRODUCTION

Educational system should match the needs and

tendencies of continuously developing society to

sustain its evolution. Traditional system of

professional education was mainly based on giving

to students some specific knowledge and skills that

can be applied in some practical work at once.

However, under the conditions of intensive

technological evolution, such an approach to

education becomes irrelevant because concrete

practical knowledge quickly becomes outdated and

unclaimed while the main abilities demanded in

these conditions become adaptability, constant

knowledge update, decision making unbiased from

established patterns, dynamic activity planning, etc.

Schematically, the main fields of skills and

knowledge of IT-professionals can be presented as

in Fig.1. So, just subject knowledge is not enough

for successful work of a good specialist in the

modern society. The Memorandum of European

Commission on lifelong learning emphasizes the

need in such social skills as acting with confidence,

result oriented focus of own actions, right balancing

of risks and responsibility in decision making as

well as such cognitive skills as ability to constantly

learn, adaptability to changing environment, skills to

dig for right information in various areas and ability

to filter necessary information in the huge

informational flow that each active individual in the

modern society is subject to.

Figure 1: Main skills of an IT-professional.

Acknowledging these principles of continuous

lifelong learning stimulates transition of educational

systems towards so called open educational system.

This system is mainly oriented on upbringing

independent self-motivated individuals that are able

to effectively collaborate with the quickly changing

235

Petrenko A., Rubanov V. and Petrenko O. (2009).

CREATING OPEN EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT BASED ON OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECTS.

In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 235-238

DOI: 10.5220/0002159002350238

 SciTePress

world - individuals that can and want to effectively

learn constantly rather than just apply known and

established practical skills in some steady work.

In such open educational systems, educational

opportunities are open to students - they can see

paths of possible education and evolution and thus it

becomes possible to discuss with its mentor the

means and specific actions for achieving individual

goals in the broad space of these opportunities. One

of the main characteristics of open education is

responsible decision making by the student about the

needed educational goals and means to meet them.

Students have to realize and take full responsibility

in this.

The main principles of open education are:

 individualization of education;

 responsibility for own success;

 collaboration;

 continuous learning.

To enable transition to the open education style,

it is worth doing the following:

 It is necessary to teach students to be self-

dependent in education. Being active is a key

thing for this.

 Students must be involved in the mutual

personal communication.

 The starting and the target points of each

particular part of the educational path should

be individual.

 Explicit stage of reflection should be

introduced in the education process.

The important general step towards open

education is creation of special self-managed

educational environment that stimulates students to

be actively involved in leading professional societies

in the studied field and to actively communicate and

collaborate within them. Such societies provide

various opportunities in implementing educational

goals and students can freely and independently

(often unconsciously) choose whatever fits them

best individually. The importance of such

environment was mentioned in the historical letter of

Nobel Prize winner academician P.L. Kapitsa to

Iosif Stalin in 1946 about establishing the legendary

Phystech (Moscow Institute of Physics and

Technology). The idea was to gather most talented

students from all around USSR and invite the best

academic and industry specialists to teach them in a

new revolutionary at that time educational

environment, which was then called “Phystech

System”. Kapitza wrote: “From the very first steps,

educating talented students in the atmosphere of

technical research and freedom of creativity using

the leading laboratories of the country”.

In this paper, we present the modern rethinking

of these principles and show how they can be

implemented for upbringing top-level specialists in

the field of software engineering by using open-

source projects combined with proper courses and

mentors to build open educational environments.

The first chapter discusses the benefits that open-

source projects can provide for building such

environments. The second chapter presents practical

experience of using open source projects at the

System Programming sub-faculties of the two

Russian top-ranked universities - Moscow State

University and MIPT (Phystech). These sub-

faculties are run jointly with the Institute for System

Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

2 OPEN-SOURCE PROJECTS

FOR OPEN EDUCATION

Using open-source software development projects

can be a good basis for building open educational

environment in the field of software engineering.

Such projects can effectively and easily enable the

following tools and educational means for almost

any specific technical subject:

 Ready educational materials: requirements for

building software, the executable software

itself, specifications of its architecture,

implementation source code, lists of already

fixed and still standing problems and features

elaborated at the development and maturity

phases of the product lifecycle.

 Ready infrastructure for practical classes:

configured informational systems for version

control and project collaboration with

possibility to communicate with real

developers of the product.

 Possibility to create strong motivation for

students by involving them in the practical

activities in real life developing projects,

especially if such projects have high social

importance and prestige.

The diversity of open-source software projects

(which is drastically increasing in the recent years)

delivers to students a wide variety of choice options

for thinking and deciding individual learning paths

within the general software engineering educational

plan. The materials of open-source projects can

serve as a public easily accessible through Internet

CSEDU 2009 - International Conference on Computer Supported Education

236

knowledge base in a specific subject - in some sense,

a counterpart of the classic public libraries that help

students to increase independence and activity in the

educational process as well as to individualize it.

Also, open source projects provide wide variety of

choices of technical aspects such as programming

languages, development technologies and

methodologies even within a specific topic because,

usually, there are a number of different competing

projects that use different technical approaches for

implementing the same functionality or a product of

the same kind. This variety and freedom of choice

improve motivation and responsibility of students

quite in line with the principles of open education.

3 PRACTICAL OPEN

EDUCATION IN SOFTWARE

ENGINEERING

In the recent years, open-source software

development projects became an important part of

the educational process at the System Programming

sub-faculties of the two Russian top-ranked

universities - Moscow State University and Moscow

Institute of Physics and Technology (Phystech).

Under the established collaboration schema, all

specialized classes and practical sessions at these

sub-faculties are driven by employees of the Institute

for System Programming of the Russian Academy of

Sciences (ISPRAS), the leading Russian research &

development government organization in the field of

software engineering. High-year students come to

ISPRAS premises to perform their research and

development practice and learn special courses

while taking all the other general classes at their

“alma-mateur”.

A few years ago we [ISPRAS] decided to

introduce a requirement for students to participate in

at least one public open source project that they can

choose at their own. Also, we changed classical

system of theoretical software engineering classes

and practical sessions to a more flexible system

under the principles of open education. Each student

is assigned a personal mentor from employees of

ISPRAS who keeps in close touch with the student,

answers his/her personal questions and advises

useful informational sources. One mentor may serve

no more than 4 students. Participation in the real life

open-source projects supplements theoretical

courses and classic practical sessions that are based

on pre-selected model examples and tasks. The main

new stages of the new system include:

 Choice of an open-source development project.

The project must have a public infrastructure

(usually at http://sourceforge.net) and be active

(that is there should be on-going developments).

Students may also join any open-source projects

that are performed at ISPRAS itself. Students

evaluate various projects by themselves, mentors

just check if the final choice meets all the

necessary requirements.

 Acquaintance with the project. Students study

their selected projects on their own with the

focus on those aspects important for their

personal educational path and for the specific

courses at the sub-faculty. At the end of this

phase, students make presentations (more

correctly seminars or defenses) of their projects

to the classmates and mentors where they can be

asked any questions by the audience. Mentors

ensure that the students can make

correspondence between the theoretical

information taken from courses with specific

practical aspects of their projects by proper

questions. Additionally, students are asked to

prepare written reports with a defined structure.

 Practical tasks. Mentors prepare a number of

tasks for students with some points assigned to

each task. Students may choose a number of

tasks to do to reach a defined target in terms of

these points. Students perform regular

presentations of their work similarly to the

presentations at the acquaintance phase.

Usually, students do particular improvements in

their projects such as analysis of existing and

elaboration of new specific requirements for the

project’s product, performing architectural design of

their possible implementation and finally

implementing them in code, testing and writing

corresponding documentation. The criterion for

success of such activities is inclusion of the changes

and improvements into the real project mainline.

Mentors encourage students to directly collaborate

with the real project team and use feedback of the

team as indicators of successful direction of their

work. This strongly improves students’ motivation

as the feedback from external parties is perceived by

students as more objective than by the internal

people.

However, participation in the real open-source

projects alone is not enough for implementing all the

principles of open education. It is the continuous

comparison of the practice in the project work with

the theory being studied in parallel that drives the

effective educational process. So it is this symbiosis

CREATING OPEN EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT BASED ON OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECTS

237

that helps implementing the effective education in

the open style. The presentations and

communication with classmates and mentors also

play an important role to complete the open

educational environment. Students are asked (and

thus encouraged to notice and learn) not only

technical questions but also questions on

organizational aspects such as project team structure,

roles, deadlines, quality issues, business

perspectives, etc.

Based on our practice, at the first presentations,

students are usually in almost complete confusion

because at the first years at their universities they get

used to the traditional system of fixed information to

learn with subsequent exams so that they are always

directed what to do. Only after a while, after

working in the more flexible and open environment,

they start realizing the real diversity of the problems

in projects and the importance of proactive position

of participants to solve them. At the end of the day,

this helps to understand and learn all the principles

of software engineering at the substantially higher

level.

4 CONCLUSIONS

In the modern society and the fast changing world,

principles of open education are acknowledged as

key factors for upbringing elite professionals. This

applies to IT-professionals in particular.

Implementing these principles for educating students

can be done in a number of ways. At our

organization [ISPRAS], we promote the use of

public open-source projects as the basis for learning

software engineering in the open education style.

Such projects provide good infrastructure for ready

to use educational materials, technical and

organizational structures and development

communities capable of providing real life feedback.

Leveraged by individual mentors from the industry

and individual learning paths both in for students’

practical work and specific theoretical courses, this

proves to be a very efficient approach for teaching

software engineering in a way that can turn even

conservatively taught students into skilled and, most

important, self-motivated and mature active

professionals.

There are a number of points worth to mention

though. Initially, the only requirement for self

choosing open-source projects by students was the

publicity and active development stage of the

projects. The additional requirements that we

eventually came to later became the size of the

project and level of maturity because small (less

than 30000 lines of code) projects or projects run by

home-made enthusiasts proved to be irrelevant for

demonstrating all the complex aspects of industrial

software engineering. The projects do not need to be

ideal in organizational and technical excellence

(analyzing and dealing with drawbacks helps

educating students as well) but they should still be

good enough to be useful. Regular meetings like

presentations and seminars where group of students

and their mentors communicate and discuss various

issues from both the projects and theoretical courses

in a free way is very important factor to mitigate

educational risks and to prevent mislearning.

The presented approach has being successfully

used at the System Programming sub-faculties of the

two Russian top universities - Moscow State

University and MIPT (Phystech), where specialized

education of high-year students (including their

diploma work) is performed at our R&D

organization of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

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