From Class Project to Open Source: Packaging for Outside Development

Abstract: Open-source software projects are becoming common in software engineering classes. Yet it is often difficult to find an OSS project that is suitable for class use, because of prerequisites or hardware that the class may not possess. One way around this is for instructors to package their own projects for open-source development. Our Expertiza system for collaborative learning has been turned into an open-source project by thoroughly documenting its internal structure, and posting it on the ROSE (Repository for Open Source in Education) site. Expertiza There is widespread and growing interest in using open-source software in teaching. Yet observers [1] report that it is difficult to find appropriate open-source projects for use in class. Our contribution is to take an existing software project and make it open source. Doing this successfully requires special effort in documentation and, for lack of a better word, advertising. Our project is Expertiza [2, 3], a collaborative-learning environment built on peer review: review of submissions by students, feedback from authors to reviewers, evaluations o