On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 09:30:10AM -0400, Gregory Hislop wrote: > I think the evaluation issue for untenured faculty is an excellent point. > But the issue that actually occurred to me first is teaching efficiency. > Time spent learning FOSS or solving FOSS problems takes time away from other > tasks, and faculty time is scarce. Teaching courses as already developed, > and teaching straight out of a text just takes less time. Too much time on > the bleeding edge is likely to leave faculty with not enough time for other > aspects of teaching and scholarship. > > Some faculty are willing to take higher risk paths and pursue things like > student FOSS participation because they see the potential high payoff. Many > faculty will not do that.
Yeah, it's kind of funny that I missed that -- I think I just assumed that my time is *already* gone, one way or another :). It might be worth noting that "high payoff" is relative: presumably you mean to the students in terms of learning and experience. I don't think that many administrators care one way or another exactly what the students are learning, and without short-term measurable outcomes & metrics, it may be viewed as a waste of time to put a lot of effort into FOSS. ...which leads to a question: what kind of metrics support teaching FOSS? I'm a committed OSS developer, so I plan to teach it anyway. But if a colleague asks if they should "buy in", what arguments can I make to them? Is there a list somewhere? thanks, --titus > -----Original Message----- > From: tos-boun...@teachingopensource.org > [mailto:tos-boun...@teachingopensource.org] On Behalf Of C. Titus Brown > Sent: Monday, September 05, 2011 11:05 PM > To: Matthew Jadud > Cc: tos@teachingopensource.org > Subject: Re: [TOS] Fwd: An experience report.... > > On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 10:58:07PM -0400, Matthew Jadud wrote: > > Hi Ralph, > > > > 2011/9/5 Ralph Morelli <ralph.more...@trincoll.edu>: > > > widespread acceptance of this approach.?? If experienced faculty, such as > > > you and Allen and I, have problems incorporating FOSS into our courses, > > > it's even worse for young faculty who have to worry about tenure. > > > > Could you explain more, for this community, why it is "worse" for > > untenured faculty attempting to integrate FOSS projects into their > > teaching? > > Hi Matt, > > because generally us untenured schlubs are more susceptible to negative > student reviews like "this prof had no idea what they were doing". For > tenured profs, the consequences are generally not so bad unless performance > is consistently bad; for untenured profs, bad performance is (or can be) > factored in to promotion, raises, and teaching assigments more strongly. > > If you have to worry about whether or not your ability to compile *this* > version of the Linux kernel on the fly in front of class is going to > have consequences, along with simply trying to get it to work in the > first place, life will be stressful. > > Personally I've found that my students are pretty happy to watch me fail, > and that they learn the right lessons from it -- that every success is > founded upon many failures. But it's something I work hard to convey, > and if I failed a lot in class I suspect it would make its way onto > evaluations and hence be a subject of my annual review. > > cheers, > --titus > -- > C. Titus Brown, c...@msu.edu > _______________________________________________ > tos mailing list > tos@teachingopensource.org > http://lists.teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos > _______________________________________________ > tos mailing list > tos@teachingopensource.org > http://lists.teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos -- C. Titus Brown, c...@msu.edu _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://lists.teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
