Immigrant Integration: Educator Resource Guide

Recommends ways for district administrators, school administrators, and teachers to promote immigrant integration in schools in critical areas, including school enrollment, classroom instruction, student assessment, and family and community outreach

Role of Newcomers Supportive Strategies on Socio-Technical Performance of Open Source Projects

The success of open source software (OSS) projects have been studied in previous research. This paper focused on the effect of newcomers’ supportive strategies in OSS projects on the success level of the projects. Our research analyzes the socio-technical commitment to the project as a proxy for success. Data about 453 OSS projects from GitHub.com is collected and analyzed to empirically test the research model. We have applied a clustering technique to explore the dataset attributes. Results show the importance of newcomers’ supportive strategies on the different socio-technical aspects of OSS projects’ leading to success. Also, we have tested the effect of programming language diversity and project profile health on the success of projects. The outcome of this study has both managerial and practical implications

Welcome? Investigating the reception of new contributors to organizational-communal open source software projects

The way new contributors are received by the established contributors in an open source project is a factor in whether they will become more regular contributors. This research examines the reception of new contributors in three open source projects to discover whether there are differences in how established contributors respond to new contributors, and if so, what those differences are. Through statistical analysis of time to first response and sentiment analysis of that response to a new contributor’s issue, we found that there is a difference in both the speed and content of responses to new contributors’ issues as opposed to those of established contributors. This difference suggests that the open source projects we observed are attentive to whether an issue was created by a new contributor and may make an effort to respond in a welcoming manner

The Types, Roles, and Practices of Documentation in Data Analytics Open Source Software Libraries: A Collaborative Ethnography of Documentation Work

Computational research and data analytics increasingly relies on complex ecosystems of open source software (OSS) "libraries" -- curated collections of reusable code that programmers import to perform a specific task. Software documentation for these libraries is crucial in helping programmers/analysts know what libraries are available and how to use them. Yet documentation for open source software libraries is widely considered low-quality. This article is a collaboration between CSCW researchers and contributors to data analytics OSS libraries, based on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews. We examine several issues around the formats, practices, and challenges around documentation in these largely volunteer-based projects. There are many different kinds and formats of documentation that exist around such libraries, which play a variety of educational, promotional, and organizational roles. The work behind documentation is similarly multifaceted, including writing, reviewing, maintaining, and organizing documentation. Different aspects of documentation work require contributors to have different sets of skills and overcome various social and technical barriers. Finally, most of our interviewees do not report high levels of intrinsic enjoyment for doing documentation work (compared to writing code). Their motivation is affected by personal and project-specific factors, such as the perceived level of credit for doing documentation work versus more "technical" tasks like adding new features or fixing bugs. In studying documentation work for data analytics OSS libraries, we gain a new window into the changing practices of data-intensive research, as well as help practitioners better understand how to support this often invisible and infrastructural work in their projects

Newcomers’ Barriers. . . Is That All? An Analysis of Mentors’ and Newcomers’ Barriers in OSS Projects

Newcomers’ seamless onboarding is important for open collaboration communi- ties, particularly those that leverage outsiders’ contributions to remain sustainable. Nevertheless, previous work shows that OSS newcomers often face several barriers to contribute, which lead them to lose motivation and even give up on contributing. A well-known way to help newcomers overcome initial contribution barriers is men- toring. This strategy has proven effective in offline and online communities, and to some extent has been employed in OSS projects. Studying mentors’ perspectives on the barriers that newcomers face play a vital role in improving onboarding pro- cesses; yet, OSS mentors face their own barriers, which hinder the effectiveness of the strategy. Since little is known about the barriers mentors face, in this thesis, we investigate the barriers that affect mentors and their newcomer mentees. We interviewed mentors from OSS projects and qualitatively analyzed their answers. We found 44 barriers: 19 that affect mentors; and 34 that affect newcomers (9 af- fect both newcomers and mentors). Interestingly, most of the barriers we identified (66%) have a social nature. Additionally, we identified 10 strategies that mentors indicated to potentially alleviate some of the barriers. Since gender-related chal- lenges emerged in our analysis, we conducted nine follow-up structured interviews to further explore this perspective. The contributions of this thesis include: iden- tifying the barriers mentors face; bringing the unique perspective of mentors on barriers faced by newcomers; unveiling strategies that can be used by mentors to support newcomers; and investigating gender-specific challenges in OSS mentor- ship. Mentors, newcomers, online communities, and educators can leverage this knowledge to foster new contributors to OSS projects

Open Source ERP In Organization: Research Agenda

Open Source Software (OSS) is a growing phenomenon, changing the way in which Information Systems (IS) are developed, distributed and implemented. The success of OSS in the worldwide market for operating systems, web servers, and other infrastructure software is substantial. However, it is still infrequent in ERP type application domains, which are said to be impossible to design from an OS angle. While a significant number of research investigate aspects of OS, few researches were dedicated to OS ERP. Based on a review of the academic and professional literature, this paper aims to improve our understanding of the current influence of OS ERP in organizations, to provide a new light on a previously developed topic and to challenge the conventional wisdom in our field which stipulates that there are some areas like ERP applications where OS could not be developed

Understanding Sustainable Growth in Online Communities of Open-Source Software : Case: Open Core Business

Online communities are crucial for the survival and success of companies using the open core model, as they rely on attracting developers to use their open-source software (OSS) and con-verting some of those free users into paying customers. Current research focuses on the success factors of OSS projects, motivations to contribute, and the sustained participation from the community perspective. This thesis provides the company’s point of view and adds the concept of sustainability to the growth of online communities, which makes this topic very relevant. The main objective of thesis is to uncover the characteristics of successful communities that propitiate sustainable growth, and what are the main challenges that stand in the way by finding answers to following questions, in the context of OSS. a) What is the nature and relevance of online communities of OSS? b) What are the main factors that drive sustainable growth in online communities of OSS? c) What are the barriers for sustainable growth in online communities of OSS? To achieve this understanding, the literature review widely covers the phenomenon of open-source software communities from what they are to why are they relevant, and how can the success of these online communities be measured. Finally, the current research on sustain-able growth in online communities and its success factors and barriers are covered. To expand the current knowledge on the sustainable growth of OSS communities, a case study is con-ducted by interviewing six key members that work with the community in an open core company by using the standardized open-ended interview approach and a six-phased thematic analysis. The findings of the study identify four areas to look after when planning for sustainable growth: member’s activities, communication platforms, company involvement, and product & marketing. Among the success factors, support, engagement, and recognition are brought up as some of the key drivers. On the other hand, the data suggests the main challenges are found in the form of communication barriers, inadequate resources, brand misconceptions, social issues, and challenges in product development

Leveraging Final Degree Projects for Open Source Software Contributions

(1) Background: final year students of computer science engineering degrees must carry out a final degree project (FDP) in order to graduate. Students’ contributions to improve open source software (OSS) through FDPs can offer multiple benefits and challenges, both for the students, the instructors and for the project itself. This work reports on a practical experience developed by four students contributing to mature OSS projects during their FDPs, detailing how they addressed the multiple challenges involved, both from the students and teachers perspective. (2) Methods: we followed the work of four students contributing to two established OSS projects for two academic years and analyzed their work on GitHub and their responses to a survey. (3) Results: we obtained a set of specific recommendations for future practitioners and detailed a list of benefits achieved by steering FDP towards OSS contributions, for students, teachers and the OSS projects. (4) Conclusions: we find out that FDPs oriented towards enhancing OSS projects can introduce students into real-world, practical examples of software engineering principles, give them a boost in their confidence about their technical and communication skills and help them build a portfolio of contributions to daily used worldwide open source applications