Open Source and Higher Education

What does open source have to do with higher education? Lacey Williams Henschel has been a developer for the University of Texas at Austin for 4 years, and she’s worked with open source technologies, home-grown software, and closed systems. The open source and higher education communities share some core values: transparency, responsibility to our communities and users, and a consistent need to maximize effectiveness even with low budgets. But developers in higher education face some unique challenges in using open source software and contributing to open source projects. How can the open source world better serve the higher education community, and encourage those developers to come aboard?

Keynote at Postgres Open in Dallas, TX.

Transcript

1. Open Source and
   Higher Education
   Lacey Williams Henschel
   The University of Texas at Austin
   @laceynwilliams
   

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8. education
   

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9. transparency
   

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10. users
    

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11. kuali.org
    

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12. “Software developed by and for
    higher ed needs a lot of flexibility
    due to the various needs of
    different parts of campus.”
    - Tim Brace, ApplyTexas
    

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13. moodle.org
    

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14. Source: Inside Higher Ed
    

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15. canvaslms.com
    

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16. sakaiproject.org
    

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17. open.edx.org
    

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18. Source: Rochester Institute of Technology
    

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19. “They don’t have faith that an ad
    hoc community will be able to
    support them in a crisis.”
    - Stephen Jacobs, RIT
    

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20. “Large public schools have the
    hardest time maintaining and
    implementing open source
    programs because they are
    competing for talent against private
    companies.”
    - Michelle Harven, EdTechTimes
    

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21. Kenneth Reitz, “Growing Open Source Seeds”
    

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22. thank you.
    

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