OSS Not Ready for Prime Time in Education? 252
cel4145 writes "Inside Higher Ed reports that the Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness has released a new study, The State of Open Source Software. Is it true that open source is 'not quite ready for prime time' in education? Or, as I suspect, is the study just another proprietary software vendor funded report for discouraging the adoption of open source software?" From the article: "Lack of vendor support is one of the largest hurdles limiting the adoption of open source in higher education, Abel said. 'The biggest thing is it takes more physical labor to implement open source because it isn't pre-packaged,' Abel said. "You have to have software developers that can make this stuff work.'" Are the staffing issues associated with OSS enough to outweigh the benefits?
Here, in schools (Score:3, Informative)
Last time I setup a basic Open-Source lab (Abiword, OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP, etc) the kids had figured out tricks that I hadn't even touched. They had gorgeous Impress (Openoffice program similar to Powerpoint) presentations, and were happily playing with penguin games. In fact, if there's anything the kids love about linux most it's the penguins... they draw penguin pictures, have stuffed penguin toys, play penguin games, etc. Of course OSS isn't just about Linux, there's BSD (which we also use) and even windows OSS applications as well (the aforementioned Impress was actually the windows version).
Going back to the games, it seems that in the OS world games are often more "wholesome" than many of the windows components. Of course, part of this is probably due to the fact that many popular linux games are based on old classics (Frozen-Bubble, SuperTux, Pingus == Arcade Bubble Game, Mario, Lemmings)... but that does tend to make it overall kid and/or educational-environment friendly.
KDE's Education Suite has made great strides (Score:3, Informative)
This goes to show that the educational sector is considered a high priority by many KDE developers, which is good because contracts with educational institutions account for a great percentage of software revenue. And of course, they have the satisfaction of making the kids (and consequently our future society) smarter, better informed, and more ready to tackle the challenges they'll face.
/Higher/ Education is not K-12 (Score:3, Informative)
We're not talking about K-12, we're talking about Higher-Education, ie College.As one of the admins for my the Engineering College at my university, I have these comments:
We have a handful of professors who refuse to run windows. We have more faculty that are involved in research projects with undergraduate students they found was more productive on linux. We have deployed group workstations for them.
We've also had a number of faculty, as well as students, requesting that we install linux and dual-boot the cluster machines. We've already nailed down the process of adding linux workstations to our windows domains allowing a roaming home-dir as well as access to the same shared drives and personal storage users have access to when they log into WinXP. We will be converting our labs starting spring break to a dual-boot WinXP/Ubuntu combo.
On our back end, all of our servers except a web server running an app that requires IIS and the domain controllers run Gentoo linux.
Unfortunately, much of the software we deploy and will not run on linux, or only exists on the linux platform in professional versions, while we can deploy cheap/free student copies for windows. We've been installing OSS windows software whenever possible including OpenOffice for some time and I've seen many students using it even though MS Word is installed.
The rest of the university is an entirely different story, however. They are a Dell/Windows shop and will remain as such. I used to work support for them and I'm not sure I'd want to some english professor who only uses a computer because typewriters are out of style* that he has to use OpenOffice on linux rather than the MS Word on Windows that he's been familiar with for some time. Hell, I wouldn't even want to tell our engineering professors that they have to use linux, now. Linux is a viable option in higher education, and we use it extensively. However, as an alternative it's not there yet. I hope to think that by providing this option we will help push some of the students to dual boot their own computers and give it a closer look.
*This is a grossly unfair stereotype. I'm sure there are english professors who would love to have linux. However I included it because it sounded good and I know this man. He's gets very ornary when computers come up and basically said the above.
Re:Moodle (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A problem now, but not in the future..... (Score:2, Informative)
My daughter just quit being a teacher after two years as her net take home pay would qualify her for food stamps. In addition to the low wage, most teachers especially in the K-8 range typically spend $500- $1000 of THEIR own money, not reimbursed, for supplies for their classroom. They are required to continue education every year, ON THEIR OWN DIME. The good teachers will spend 2-3 hours/day grading and preparing for next days class as well as spending most weekends grading papers.
Most companies OTOH will pay for you to take extra classes and training. Who in the world donates real cash to buy supplies for their company and does not expect to be reimbursed. The only equivalence I see is in most high tech companies, we all work rediculous hours, just as teachers do.
There are some items that are obscured there... (Score:4, Informative)
There are five categories of teachers: aids, those lacking masters or other needed credentials for a 'full license', fully licensed (usually with master degrees), administrators who teach, and special license teachers. In post K-12, there are part-timers, full-timers, tenured, research (e.g. non-teaching but supervisory), administrative, and a slew of small 'other' categories. They all teach, have different skills, and only the top couple of tiers make comparatively decent money.
The hours in a day are variable. Many spend ten or more if they supervise or sponsor clubs or other extra-curricular activities. They often work weekends doing the same thing, often for additional if low pay.
They get a few holidays that the rest of us don't. Most of my summers were spent teaching, or taking classes to stay up in my profession. I didn't get to slack but for a couple of weeks, which is less than my professional peers did. I got a nice holiday break in the winter; that part was good. Others in my profession, do, too.
And, I put up and dealt daily with extraordinary discipline problems, not to count the developmentally disabled and disadvantaged individuals, each with their own circumstances. It's what I was paid for. Today, the problems are more severe and the regulatory/compliance environment problems are exacerbated by parents that don't have time for their children, or let WoW or an Xbox or Family Guy babysit them while they deal with their own stressed out, post-divorce lives. Add in the sociopaths, the drug-enabled, and the litigation prone, and it's a mess. I feel for both students and teachers who are there to learn and teach. It's not easy. Yes, other professions have their stress and they're also crappier jobs, and those that are entirely thankless. But teachers and students are the next generation and embody the hopes of the current ones, and ones past. My hat is off to them, a phase that translates to my respect for their difficult job.
Re:'Higher Education', indeed. (Score:4, Informative)
First, this study is only about higher education - nothing to do with schools, K-12, etc.
Second, it broke open source into two categories:infrastructure area (Linux, Apache, etc.) and higher ed specific applications (course management systems, finance systems, etc.). I seen many comments that it is negative but the report itself is not negative at all. I think that is the impression from the Inside Higher Ed article that interviewed many other sources. But, the overall message is not negative. In the infrastructure area (Linux, Apache, etc.) open source is doing very well in higher ed. The application area (course management systems, finance systems, etc.) is where there is no tremendous interest but not a lot of fruit yet. That doesn't mean there won't be - long way to go.
Third, the study was funded by Sun Microsystems, Unicon, and SCT. While commercial companies all three have been leaders in promoting and implementing open source in higher education.
Fourth, the study was conducted from day 1 under the auspices that only those who participated in the research and the sponsors would receive the full report. That's how we attract support and involvement. If we made it all available for free no one would see why they should pay or participate (I know because I've tried it that way).
Fifth, IMS has had no involvement - other than me. We're making the A-HEC research a benefit of IMS membership starting with this and in the future.
Sixth, IMS is not just commercial vendors - far from it. Members include open University, Stanford, Michigan, Indiana, MIT, etc.
Seventh, I wrote the report and the sponsors helped make minor editorial comments. So, it is my work and I don't perceive myself as biased but then does anybody? Finally, those that have actually read the report from the higher ed open source community have so far commented that it is on target. I think if anything it is very hopeful about the future but giving statistically valid accounting of the current situtation.
If at some point in the future this research track becomes well enough subsidized that I can afford to open it up to the whole world I will. That may happen under the IMS umbrella. I certainly hope so. You won't find Gartner, Eduventures, or even Educause providing as much open info on teir web sites as A-HEC has published - and we are much less funded.
Lastly, A-HEC is a very legitimate honest organization that has had numerous volunteers from the higher education community participate and benefit from sharing of best practices. I personally donated a year of my time getting A-HEC going because I believe in it. It would be nice if folks would get involved and understand what we do before criticizing. Especially when this whole thread started on an ewrroneous premise that the report was negative!
Thanks for your interest in this, Rob
Re:'Higher Education', indeed. (Score:2, Informative)
One of the challenges for this in higher ed is that the elite universities have plenty of their own resources and are not as likely to contract, especially on any sustainable basis. The mid-market needs the services, and they will pay for them, but they have to be convinced that open source apps are better than the alternatives and that they are in fact here to stay.
Note that the study found that only 10% of of the hed market has rejected open source at this point. That means that there is a lot of potential for growth in the product adoption as well as services. However, at this point the service opportunity around the higher applications is pretty small so the study assessment is as given next:
Excerpt from the study:
Market for Open Source Services
While impossible to gauge for sure the current market for services in conjunction with open source applications appears to be too fragmented and non-recurring to represent a significant opportunity. About 25% of the market is seeking some outside help with open source but this is distributed among some ten initiatives. uPortal, Sakai, SCT Luminis Platform, and Moodle are those most in need of external services with implementation, product support, and customization the most needed services. The ongoing services of end-user support and hosting were the least sought after.
implementation != education ???? (Score:3, Informative)
Open source too much labor for education? FUD.