Vocational Training on Open Source Software Needs Analysis REPORT

Transcription

1 Vocational Training on Open Source Software Needs Analysis REPORT from conducted survey, interviews and additionally gathered data under the project October 2009 Sofia, Bulgaria Internet Society Bulgaria License: Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution 1

2 1. Overview The project Vocational Training on Open Source Software Needs Analysis was executed by Internet Society Bulgaria in the period between June 2009 and September The key activities which were planned to be performed within the project were:! To develop a questionnaire and carry out a small survey in Bulgaria in order to acquire information about the current situation regarding vocational training on Open Source Software.! To take several interviews with people who teach or study Open Source Software.! To analyse the results obtained and to find and provide relevant information from other EU projects to complement the overall picture and results obtained.! To prepare a report with the findings, a summary of the problems discovered and to provide analysis and suggestions about how these problems could be solved. The present report summarizes the main work and findings of the project and suggests further activities and measures which could be taken to improve the situation with the provision of trainings on Open Source Software in Bulgaria. The conclusions drawn could also serve as a basis for improvements in other European countries, where Open Source Software is being used and taught. 2. Gathering background data Before developing the questionnaire and conducting the survey, it was identified as necessary to obtain certain background information, such as what was the current situation regarding availability of courses on Open Source Software in Bulgaria, as well as determine which were the main institutions to offer such courses. Such preliminary analysis would serve as a basis for the subsequent development of the questionnaire and would help identifying the main target groups to participate in the survey. Respectively, in June 2009 it was conducted a quick study of the current actors participating in the trainings on Open Source Software. According to the information gathered, there are currently six main 2

3 types of organisations which offer courses on Open Source Software in Bulgaria.! The Open Source Software community. This is an informal, usually self-organized community with high reputation among the Free/Open Source Software supporters. It has been active in Bulgaria since the year 2000 and has hundreds of members and volunteers who contribute to its activities. Part of these activities are related to training on Open Source Software.! Non-Governmental Organisations. There are a number of small NGOs in Bulgaria which offer free of charge courses on Open Source Software and which are usually sponsored under certain international programmes or projects.! Universities. The current picture in the universities show that there are certain courses on Open Source Software organised at academic level. The Faculty for Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Sofia, as well as the Technical University of Sofia seem to be the most active in providing space for Open Source Software courses.! Private training institutions. There is a number of small private companies mainly in Sofia, which offer specialised trainings on Open Source Software. However, it seems that the demand for such courses is irregular and not very high.! Public schools. In certain schools,teachers who have interest in Open Source Software, are organising some limited activities helping the students to wider their horizons and understanding on software issues. However, since there is an official governmentally approved plan and program for each school grade, new courses based on personal interests and initiative can hardly get attention.! Individuals. There are some individuals who offer trainings on Open Source Software as freelancers. Some of them teach on a voluntary basis, while others are hired usually by NGOs to conduct shortterm courses. Having researched this situation overview, the project team decided to develop a questionnaire, which would gather additional information about the specific types of the courses,offered by the institutions mentioned above, what the demands on the market are and what are the specific gaps of educational and 3

4 training materials about Open Source Software. The questionnaire should also help to gather information about the training materials used to teach the courses, as well as their quality. 3. Questionnaire development and execution of the survey The project team decided to develop a questionnaire which would be sent to one representative of each of the institutions mentioned above which offer courses on Open Source Software. This would allow for obtaining a reasonable variety of data in a quick and resource-effective way. The project team assumed that the issues which each different type of organisation faces would be similar, so collecting responses from each kind of organisation was considered more important, than collecting high number of replies. The questions in the questionnaire were grouped in three different sections, as follows: general information about the training institution, current status of trainings provided and further conditions in disseminating training materials. The goal was to get a picture on the amount of courses provided, demand for it, availability and quality of the training materials. The overall time to fill in the survey was estimated to last not more than 10 minutes and the responses were collected via . The full questionnaire, translated into English, is available as Annex I to the current report. The survey was performed in July and beginning of September 2009, due to the vacation period in Bulgaria. The team contacted one representative, involved in the training process, from each type of institution identified in the Gathering background data phase and asked them to fill in the questionnaire. 4. Survey results As previously mentioned, the questionnaire has been sent to one representative of each type of institution identified to be offering courses on Open Source Software. Therefore, replies were collected from:! Type University: the Faculty for Mathematics and Informatics within the University of Sofia! Type University: leader of an informal course conducted in the University of Sofia 4

5 ! Type University: the Technical University of Sofia, Faculty of Communications! Type NGO: Centre for Media and Arts Interspace, Sofia, Bulgaria! Type School: Professional Gymnasium "Naiden Gerov", Lom, Bulgaria! Type Open Source Software Community: Linux for Bulgarians! Type Individual: individual, working as a freelance teacher in Open Source Software Below is presented a summary of the results obtained from the survey, question by question. 1. Type of Institution: answers were collected from 3 University representatives; 2 associations or NGOs; 1 public school and 1 individual. 2. Type of education and training provided: The courses offered in the Universities are both formal and informal, at a graduate/postgraduate level. The courses offered in the Associations are only informal, vocational. The school is offering only secondary school education. The individual who filled in the questionnaire is providing trainings only on demand. 3. Number of students taking the training: the number of students varies significantly, starting from 21 to 50 and ending up at more than 1000 for one of the Universities. An interesting discovery is that Open Source Software Community claimed to have as many students who are trained on Open Source Software (>1000) as the Universities which took part in the survey. 4. Number of teachers permanently employed: The number of permanently employed teachers who teach Open Source Software varies significantly in the answers and is from 0 for one of the University departments to more than 30 for other departments. For the Associations, these numbers are between 0 and Number of external trainers: The result might lead to a conclusion, that Associations compensate the lack of permanent teaching staff with a higher number of temporary employed trainers, respectively between 1 and 20. The Universities have also quite varying numbers, which are between 0 and more than Training methods used for the Open Source Software training courses: Almost all 5

6 respondents stated that the courses are Computer aided and all of them were organised in a classroom. The Open Source Software Community representatives are conducting their trainings as seminars and conferences, in addition to the classroom and computer aided teaching. Three of the respondents also stated that the courses have online component, but these were mainly the Universities. 7. Length and intensity of the Open Source Software courses offered: Here, the answers obtained were extremely different from each other. Some courses are offered as a one-day course, others are weekly, third are monthly. 8. Number of OSS courses conducted within a year: Despite the high numbers of students stated in the previous questions, the number of OSS courses conducted within a year seem to be disproportionally low. The Universities are offering between 2 and 5 courses a year (with a weekly or monthly duration), while the courses offered in the other types of organisations are between 3 and Number of courses offered in the institution: In the Universities, the number of Open Source Software courses offered in general varied between 1 and 5. In the Associations this number varies according to the demand. 10. Number of students taking OSS courses per year: The number of students seemed to be also disproportional, varying to the organisational size. In the Universities, the students taking an OSS course are between 30 and 100. In the same time, the students participating in the trainings organised by the Open Source Software Community are approximately 200 according to the responses. 11. Where do you get training material on OSS from? All respondents stated Internet as a main source for getting the training materials for their Open Source Software courses. The second most chosen source were both friends and specialized trainers. The same amount of replies got the option Created myself. There was only 1 reply stating that the training materials are gathered by the OSS suppliers. This opens a good opportunity for further collaboration between the OSS suppliers and manufacturers and the organisations performing the trainings, which is apparently lacking right now. 6

7 12. Which of the following OSS courses do you teach most frequently/are most demanded? The highest amount of answers were received about Operating Systems, Development Systems, Internet Applications, Office products. The least demanded were apparently the Content Management Systems, Groupware and Application Services. Traditionally, Operating Systems and Office Products enjoy higher popularity among the demands for software-oriented trainings, so obtaining those results is not a surprise. 13. Who owns the copyrights to the training materials in you institution? The replies received to this question were mostly that there is no copyright or license, or that the trainer is the owner of the copyright, or that the material is using a particular license, namely Creative Commons. These answers, however, suggest that there might be a lack of proper understanding about the licensing issues, most probably because the respondents, answering that that there is no particular license, in fact might not be aware about its existence. It is very unlike that the materials do not have any particular license, and even then, they should be clearly marked as All rights reserved or Public Domain (in the similarity of the specific Bulgarian legislation). 14. Quality of the current Open Source Software materials uses for training. Most of the trainers agreed that the completeness of the materials is very good or good. The quality and support provided in regards to the training materials were recognised as good too. However, the applicability was stated to be poor or at an average level by half of the respondents, while for the others it was very good. The usability of the materials was regarded to be also relatively good, but for none of the respondents it was very good. 15. What of the following would improve the training materials? Almost all of the respondents mentioned that more material for complete coverage is needed, together with better training and access to related material. This could, to some extent, explain the reason why most of the trainers stated earlier that they prepare the training materials themselves. 16. Are you willing to share course and training material and under which license? All of the respondents declared that they wish to share the training materials, most of them under a Creative Commons 2.5 license. Two respondents pointed the GFDL license as preferred, and one stated that he/she does not know which license to choose. 7

8 5. Conducting complementary interviews In order to get additional information and some qualitative results, six personal interviews were performed. Three of them were with trainers, teaching courses on Open Source Software, and the other were with students, taking part in the courses. From the three interviewed trainers, one was a University Professor, and the other two were from private companies in Bulgaria. The interviewed students were: a person without any technical background and currently studying in the University, and two employees from private companies. The questions which were posed to the trainers during the interviews were: 1. Who makes a decision about the contents of the courses? All the three trainers who were interviewed stated that they are entirely responsible for preparing the contents of the courses. 2. What is of highest importance for you when doing a course on OSS? The most important issues stated were the availability of practical exercises and major support from the businesses for conducting the courses. 3. What is your usual way for finding and preparing training materials for the courses? All the three trainers stated that they adapt already existing materials to their needs and relating them to their personal experiences. 4. Could you provide some personal impressions from the courses which you have taught attendance, demand, interest, etc.? All the three trainers stated that there are not many courses offered on Open Source Software regularly. There are some, appearing from time to time in the programs of the Universities, but in general there 8

9 availability is scarce. The currently available courses are oriented towards the current market demands, usually specific programming language or operating system, but do not build upon a wider area of topics. An issue is also the peak of interest in the beginning of the courses and the decrease of interest toward the end of the semester. 5. How according to you could the courses offered be improved? Two of the trainers stated that the practical exercises are vital to keep interest to the course, and to make the contents relevant. However, issues like lack of space or a laboratory to perform the exercises are a hindrance for that. According to another trainer, the courses could be improved by adding new modules in the program, but most of the time that would require additional funding, usually not available. The third trainer underlined that support from the private companies is essential. The questions which were posed to the students during the interviews were: 1. How did you find the course and did you find it appropriate? Two of the students stated that they found the courses through the major portal of the Open Source Software Community The third student found the course through a poster in the University. All of them claimed to be content with the courses which they attended and found them extremely appropriate. 2. Are there enough materials available for your preparation for the course? All the three students mentioned that there are enough materials, mostly in Internet, but that it is very hard to filter the contents, and to decide which material is good or not, and which one is suitable for the level of the course. 3. Are there any courses on Open Source Software which you would like to attend? Most preferred courses are related to programming and networks. 9

10 4. Could you share your personal impressions from the courses you have been attending and how the content could be improved? All three students said that they were satisfied with the courses, because they learned new things. However, they would like to participate the courses more often and regularly, because at present times trainings are offered once a week at most and just for limited amount of time. 6. Data gathered from other European initiatives and projects A recent European Framework 6 funded project, called Science, Education and Learning in Freedom (SELF, active during ) had a similar aim of research under one of the work packages. Although it was researching only educational materials about GPL licensed Free Software Application, while requiring the educational materials also to use certain exclusively free licenses, it is worth to show and share some findings on global level, which were discovered during the SELF Project execution. Further are presented the results of a research on the available OSS materials online, rated according to the completeness of the materials and a gap analysis. Eight main categories had been suggested for the general classification of OSS materials:! Introduction to Free Software and Open Standards. Materials related to the use Free Software (FS) and Open Standards (OS). Introductory materials that could be combined with references to external essays and other documents. It was considered of strategic importance to understand the main concepts and philosophy behind FS and OS.! Open Standards. Materials that aim to disseminate the needs of using Open Standards and their principles.! Office Tools. This kind of software applications deserves a main category due to the importance they have for most users.! Communication Tools. These tools constitute the other set of most frequently used applications by most users and good skills using them are essential in the current information society.! GNU/Linux. These systems are the most spread within the Free Software community of users and profuse resources can be found on the Internet. 10

11 ! Educational Software. This category was of the highest priority within the SELF platform and special efforts had been devoted to ensure a proper set of educational materials to document the available applications.! Enterprise Software. This kind of software constituted another strategic category to the SELF Project. The lack of documentation within this category is widely known, probably due to novelty of these applications.! Multimedia Software. New technologies are also of strategic importance within the SELF project since they are seen as new pedagogical means to achieve educational aims. The next table summarised the assessment of the materials searching process. Using the categories relevant to SELF, the second column shows the confidence level of this assessment, and the third column assesses how documented is each category with the materials already available. The possible values for each field are the following: Confidence Level 1: Low (much more search is needed) 2: Medium (more search may help find more materials) 3: High (we are quite sure that the search has been exhaustive) Documentation Level 0: Nothing (no documentation has been found) 1: Partially (some documentation has been found) 2: Mostly (many materials have been found) 3: Totally (almost all of the required documentation has been found) Category / Subcategory Confidence Level Documentation Level 1 Introduction to Free Software and Open Standards 1.1 Basic concepts and philosophy History of Free Software and Open Standards Free Software development models Free Software and business models Open Standards 2.1 Unformatted Text Formatted Text

12 Category / Subcategory Confidence Level Documentation Level 2.3 Scientific Text Raster Image Vector Image Video Image Printed-Oriented Hypertext Presentation Audio Learning Standards Enterprise Standards Office tools 3.1 Office suites Word processors Spreadsheets Presentation programs Databases Graphics suites Diagrams Formulas Flowcharts Reports Communication tools 4.1 Suites Web clients Mail user agents (MUA or clients) Instant messengers and IRC clients File transfer clients GNU/Linux 12

13 Category / Subcategory Confidence Level Documentation Level 5.1 Distributions and metadistributions Technical Concepts User environment Unix command line programs Shells and shell programming Scripting languages Administration Local administration Networking Services Printing Secure shell Web Mail transfer agents (MTAs or servers) Mail delivery agents (MDA or Filters) File transfer Version control Database Graphical system Xservers Xlib Window managers Display managers Session managers Desktop managers Toolkits Specific applications Text editors

14 Category / Subcategory Confidence Level Documentation Level Software development tools Format converters CD/DVD toasters File managers Boot loaders Virtualisation Others 6 Educational software 6.1 Educational distributions Educational media authoring Training software Educational applications Scientific applications and libraries Specific applications Mathematics Physics Chemistry Biology Computer-aided design (CAD) Enterprise software 7.1 Project management Personal information managers Collaborative software (groupware) Enterprise resource planners (ERPs) Content management system (CMSs) Costumer relationship management (CRM) Software development management system Multimedia software 14

15 Category / Subcategory Confidence Level Documentation Level 8.1 Audio Video Animation D Graphics D Graphics Media authoring Games

16 Gap analysis Most of the materials analysed during the search were produced and maintained by the community of users and developers of a specific application. Therefore, they are usually presented as User Guides, Reference Manuals and Tutorials. The first two formats are very useful for intermediate and advanced users who are learning by themselves, since they usually cover most of the relevant topics related to that specific application. On the other side, tutorials are usually directed to beginners and thus require less previous knowledge from the reader. Unfortunately, only in some cases they cover more than a few specific tasks and skills, rendering them insufficient for a user who looks for a broader formation. This observation led to the first of the detected generic gaps on the available materials: the lack of resources structured as learning materials, i.e., textbooks, exercises, exams, courses, presentations, etc. In short, the materials needed both by teachers and students in any school, training centre or learning environment. The lack of this kind of materials it is a known fact. One of the main obstacles for the use of Free Software and Open Standards is the migration process from proprietary systems and formats. Regardless of the scope and scale of a given migration process, some characteristics are common to all of them, such as the need of user training, format conversion tools, alternative applications, etc. In this area many different needs were identified, such as: " User training materials. In any migration process, the productivity of users decreases during a certain period of time, while they adapt to the new set of applications. Thus, this transitory period must be as short as possible, and the transition must be smooth and painless for users. The importance of training materials is paramount to fulfil this objective, since they are often the main information resource for users. Thus, training materials must cover all the required topics, and at the same time take profit of the skills acquired by users in the previous environment in order to reduce training times. " Format conversion guides. System administrators and data managers are usually responsible of format conversion during migration processes. One of the conditions for a successful migration is that older files must be accessible with minimum effort from the user, and this usually requires specific training for the team responsible of format conversion, or at least a set of guidelines and reference documents to guarantee the availability of older data. Many teachers use computers as learning tools in their classes, and in most cases the overall result is satisfactory both for teachers and students, improving the learning experience and encouraging experimentation and participation in class. However, the understanding that many teachers have of how computers work is poor, and their misconceptions can have a negative impact on the way they use computers in class. Ideally, a teacher that uses computers as learning tools should be familiar with basic concepts of computer science, at least to give satisfactory answers to the natural questions that arise when students use computers in class. This basic concepts should include the typical hardware found in a PC, some fundamentals 16

17 of operating systems and the main protocols and services used in Internet. Many other individuals and organisations would benefit from such introductory materials to computer science using Free Software and Open Standards. Learning materials designed to cover this gap should keep the level of technical detail as low as possible, and focus on providing a general understanding of computers and networks. The specific gaps discovered correspond to the previously defined categories. Here are the findings:! Introduction to Free Software and Open Standards in the category tree used for the classification of available materials. In the subcategory of Basic concepts and philosophy, many essays have been found on the philosophic and ethic concepts supporting the use of Free Software and Open Standards, but none of them provide a wide, comprehensive and structured resource suitable for the formation of advocates, activists and politicians. This audience requires concise and powerful arguments covering several points of view: philosophical, ethical, political, legal, pedagogical, economical, etc.! Educational applications - the results were very unsatisfactory: applications specially created with educational purposes are well documented from the point of view of developers and advanced users, but few resources are available that can be readily used on class. Moreover, no materials had been found on the educational use of other applications not designed for this purpose. This absence of materials could be due to several factors, including a lack of interest from the producers of materials. Many teachers have developed great materials to use in their classes together with free software applications, and have never published them due to lack of motivation, ignorance on the existing demand for this kind of materials or lack of a suitable platform for their publication and collective maintenance.! The category of Enterprise applications lacks documentation in many subcategories, specially in Enterprise Resource Planners (ERP). One of the reasons of this lack is that many software companies that develop free ERPs base part of their business in training and documentation licensing. The benefits of free over proprietary documentation are very similar to the benefits of free over proprietary software, and those companies would probably benefit from publishing their resources under a free license. Meanwhile, this whole subcategory must be considered a gap. 7. Conclusions and suggestions for further improvements From the data which was gathered from the surveys, interviews and external projects and opinions are drawn the following conclusions. 17

18 IDENTIFIED ISSUES Availability The first major issue which appears is the limited availability of courses on Open Source Software. Whenever the courses are available, they are usually with a rather limited and short duration, which might not be enough to teach all the desired material. The fact itself that there was a huge discrepancy between the number of students and the number of courses offered by various institutions speaks about the presence of a higher demand in certain courses, which demand is however not satisfied. A possible issue might be that the courses which exist are not adequate to the demand or to the capacity of the institution conducting the courses. The Open Source Software community, for example, obviously has an already established audience, experience and form of training but lacks resources to hire permanent staff or to add extra materials or experiences. On the other hand, the Universities have resources and students, but it is difficult to establish formal courses there. Cooperation with the businesses Among the survey results there was only 1 reply stating that the training materials are gathered by the OSS suppliers. In one of the personal interviews, one of the trainers also stated that a better cooperation with the businesses could exist. From all the data gathered, it seems that the current state of the art is that the majority of courses offered in Bulgaria on OSS are informal and targeting informal communities. Even in the case of trainings in the Universities, part of the courses were stated to be informal, and just a few were part of the official educational program. Respectively, all the trainers have to find and prepare the training materials themselves, facing the same issue as their students the availability of too much material on the internet and the big resources needed to filter it and decide which is suitable for the what course and level, and which is not. This problem shows that there is a lot of room for stronger cooperation between the Open Source Software suppliers, the trainers and the potential students. Such cooperation could be in sponsoring laboratories for more practical exercises or providing specialized training materials to both teachers and students. Despite that the Open Source Software is mainly driven as a community development, there are hundreds of companies which re-use the software for their own purposes, and 18

19 might be quite beneficial to have trainees who adopt community visions and ideas. Training materials Applicability A common issue which appeared through the interviews was related to the dissatisfaction of most of the respondents of the applicability of the training materials available. This could be due to different reasons, but most probably the content available is focused mostly on theoretical aspects and issues, as well as o topics which are not directly relevant to the current market situation, or the material itself is not updated to the latest available version of the software. In all cases, a possible solution is a stronger cooperation with the businesses by providing possibilities for applying the theoretical knowledge gathered through the courses, and by assisting in preparing the proper training materials. Licensing A standing issue is the licensing of the training materials. Half of the respondents stated that there is no license of the materials which they use. However, it might be often the case of lack of understanding the licensing and copyright policy by the trainers. It might often be the case when a material is taken from Internet and is not in the standard form, e.g. document, e-book, etc. but rather just from a web page or as an excerpt of online text. A possible solution is to raise more awareness about copyright issues of knowledge materials, access to knowledge initiatives, models of licensing, etc. Completeness of the material Almost all of the respondents mentioned in the survey that more material for complete coverage is needed, together with better training and access to related materials. This could, to some extent, explain the reason why most of the trainers stated earlier that they prepare the training materials themselves. This is showing in a definitive way, that it is a hard task for the trainers to find content on the Internet and it is probably easier to use personal experiences (as stated in one of the interviews), rather than spending hours of filtering or searching for appropriate content online. 19

20 SUMMARY OF THE SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT Below is a brief summary of the issues in need of improvement in terms of training on Open Source Software in Bulgaria. 1. Better balance between the demand for courses on Open Source Software and their availability. 2. Better balance between the topics covered in the courses and the demand for them. Such balance could bring in the future an increase of interest and demand for OSS trainings, but also stability in the cycle of trainings provided. 3. Greater availability of studying programs and variety of levels. The currently available courses are focused mostly on Operating Systems, Internet Applications and Office Suites and are on the level of Introductory courses. This explains the lack of subsequent demand for the courses. 4. Better collaboration with the private sector, in order to supply training materials and infrastructure for practical exercises. 5. Collaboration with the private sector to provide opportunities for implementation and applicability of the knowledge obtained in the courses. 6. Availability of internet resources to facilitate the selection of materials, for both teachers and students, on certain courses on Open Source Software. 7. Awareness about the general copyright principles and specific licensing issues regarding educational materials and sharing of knowledge. 20