Walking on water and writing software to specification is easy, if they are frozen.

Conclusion

Linh Vu <bruce[at]erethesunrises[dot]net>

In the present study, we have identified the expectations that employers have for graduates, which include oral communication skills, technical writing skills, project management skills, genuine concern for users and work experience. The current educational model falls short in its delivery of these qualities in their graduates due to certain flaws: corporatization of education, weakened academic community, scarcity of financial and human resources, and ineffective collaboration.

We have introduced the open source software development paradigm, and studied the research and recommendations by CSSE educators and open-source experts. From our study, we have proposed a more effective educational model, which could address the shortcomings of the current model. Our model is heavily based on collaboration between students and academics in software projects, which would help students to develop collaborative skills needed for the industry. It also strengthens the academic community and benefits the general public.

We have identified certain limitations of our proposed model: those of OSSD itself, the reluctance to curriculum changes and student abilities. A thorough feasibility study of the implementation of our model would be needed to address these issues. Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this paper, and we
hope to resolve this in future studies. It would be interesting to witness this model in practice, and the impact it has on the education of CSSE students.

References

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[S.00] Raymond E. S. The cathedral and the bazaar. http://www.catb.org/ esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/, 2000.

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[SJ04] Carbone A. Sheard J. From informal to formal: creating the australasian computing education community. In 6th Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE2004), volume 30, pages 291–297, Dunedin, New Zealand, 2004. Australian Computer Society, Inc.

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Article index

  1. Introduction
  2. Industry expectations for CSSE graduates
  3. Current educational model
  4. The open source educational model - Introduction
  5. Starting a project, requirements analysis and design
  6. Implementation and testing
  7. Maintenance, community and public
  8. Limitations
  9. Conclusion

Page contents

Article info

Published: Wed 17/01/2007 12:02am AEST

Updated: Thu 22/02/2007 4:53pm AEST

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