When San Jose State University student Kyle Brady published the source code of his completed homework assignments after finishing a computer science class, his professor vigorously objected. The professor insisted that publication of the source code constituted a violation of the school's academic integrity policy because it would enable future students to cheat. Brady stood his ground as the confrontation escalated to the school's judicial affairs office, which sided with the student and affirmed that professors at the university cannot prohibit students from posting source code.
This conflict reflects some of the broader friction that exists between open source ideological values and an academic system in which collaboration and the ability to repurpose existing work makes it difficult to measure individual achievement. Free culture science fiction novelist Cory Doctorow shared his thoughts about the issue on Thursday in a blog post on BoingBoing. Doctorow suggests that assignments are ultimately more valuable to the students when the work that they produce can have broader purpose than merely fulfilling academic requirements. He also rightly points out that peer review of source code and studying existing implementations are both common practices in the real world of professional software development.
These are both compelling points and they illustrate how traditional academic sensibilities can be detrimental to the intellectual development of students. I concur fully with Doctorow's assessment of Brady's struggle and I have one further point to add myself. I think that sharing source code is an experience that has inherent educational value. As a programmer, I have learned more about programming from seeing how other people modify and reuse parts of my own code than I ever learned in a classroom.
The number of computer science students has declined sharply over the past decade, hitting rock bottom in 2007. Enrollment started to bounce back last year, but the United States still suffers from a lack of students who are pursuing technical degrees. This is degrading US technological competitiveness in the global community.
Part of the problem is that the detached and unproductive nature of modern computer science education makes the entire experience joyless and less valuable. Doctorow seems to have similar thoughts about this:
"I've always thought it was miserable that we take the supposed best and brightest in society, charge them up to $60,000 a year in fees, then put them to work for four years on producing busywork that no one—not them, not their profs, not other scholars—actually wants to read," Doctorow wrote. "Kyle's prof's idea of how computer programmers work is exactly what's meant by the pejorative sense of 'academic'—unrealistic, hidebound, and out-of-touch with reality."
Rather than forcing students to complete tedious busy-work in isolation, there are more practical and enriching approaches that could be taken to improve computer science education. Some schools actually encourage students to participate in open source software projects and make it part of the curriculum.
One example of computer science education done right is Seneca College, which collaborates with the Mozilla Foundation. Seneca students participate in a wide range of open source projects and are working on some very exciting and innovative things. The culture of this kind of computer science program is far more conducive to a meaningful learning experience.
Unlike Brady's professor at SJSU who was upset by the fact that a student dared to share his source, some of Seneca's enlightened computer science teachers practically expect their students to build dialog around their work. Seneca professor David Humphrey strongly encourages his students to blog and points out the importance of making it a regular habit. Humphrey also has has some relevant thoughts about Brady's predicament.
"This is proof that there are still serious barriers to mixing education proper with the web. At the same time that we're hearing stories like this one, there are an increasing number of stories about the opposite, and people who see the value of letting go of closed approaches to knowledge in favour of collaboration," Humphrey wrote. "More students need to follow Kyle's lead and take their learning seriously."
Indeed. It's also clear that more professors need to follow Humphrey's lead and explore ways that collaboration can be used to build a more fruitful learning experience.
Listing image by Justin Marty