Free and Open Education: FLOSSCom Virtual & On-Campus Summer University

The European Union funded FLOSSCom research project is investigating Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities as learning environments. The project aims to identify principles of FLOSS communities that could be transferred to educational settings, e.g. how the community model could help to improve education.

FLOSS communities might be described as one of the best examples of open and free education, where thousands of individuals, from very different educational backgrounds and geographic areas, work together in project groups developing and improving new or existing systems (project work & learning).

Translated to education this would mean that every citizen would be able to learn at no charge and throughout their life. In FLOSS communities one can find up to date learning resources that are provided by the community for the community and embedded in a large support network; provided voluntarily by the community members in a collaborative manner.

Trying to explore and transfer the success factors of these kind of communities to formal education is the objective of the FLOSSCom project. The FLOSSCom project consists of partners from 4 European countries (Greece, Portugal, Netherlands and United Kingdom) and is supported by the European Commission’s Minerva Programme in education.

The project will run a ‘Virtual and On-Campus Summer University’ starting at the 3rd of July. The Summer University is a 12 week open access session with the objective of developing a toolkit on ‘Learning the Open Source Way’

The summer university will be conducted as a joint event bringing in as a “special guest” the Ubuntu community – The world’s famous Linux distribution with a community of 320.000 enthusiasts!

The project especially encourages students to take the chance and engage with experts throughout the globe and asks everyone to feel free to bring in their knowledge, thoughts and energy, without any fees or enrolment criteria. The invitation is open to learners who have no, little or a great deal of experience with FLOSS communities.

As a reward for their contribution, 10 students that proved a high commitment to the project at the ‘Virtual & On-Campus Summer University’ will be invited to an International Workshop in Portugal taking place in summer 2008! The FLOSSCom project will cover their travel and accommodation cost! All those who will participate voluntarily at the project and help us making the “Virtual & On-Campus Summer University” a successful event will receive an e-certificate in the name of all FLOSSCom project partners of having participated in the project.

For further information on the FLOSSCom project: www.flosscom.net
Summer University Toolkit Development Space: http://wiki.ubuntu.com/flosscom
Summer University Work Space at Ubuntu / Launchpad: http://launchpad.net/flosscom

The FLOSSCom project consists of partners from 4 European countries (Greece, Portugal, Netherlands and United Kingdom) and is supported by the European Commission’s Minerva Programme in education.

The Project is Co-ordinated by the Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação, Portugal and includes the following partner:
* Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Programming Languages & Software Engineering Lab (SWENG), Greece
* The Open University (The OU), Institute of Educational Technology (IET), United Kingdom
* Thessaloniki Technology Park Management & Development Corporation S.A (TTP), Greece
* UNU–MERIT – United Nations University, Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology, The Netherlands
* University of Paisley, School of Computing, ICT in Education Research group (ICTE), United Kingdom

The “Virtual and On-Campus Summer University” is carried out as a joint event including the FLOSSCom partners and additionally Ubuntu Education.

The Open University
Institute of Educational Technologies (IET)
PO Box 197
Milton Keynes
MK7 6BJ
United Kingdom
http://www.open.ac.uk

Contact:
Mr. Andreas Meiszner
Mail: A.Meiszner@open.ac.uk
Phone: +351 960 148400

This release was published on openPR.