Educating Students to be Better Citizens of Tech Communities

It well known that women are underrepresented in technology, holding less than 25% of IT positions. Reports of women and minorities being harassed, discriminated against, and abused in technology communities routinely appear in scholarly publications and popular media. These types of negative interactions add to the diversity problem by discouraging women and minorities from even considering participation in technology communities. To help address this diversity problem and encourage better citizenship in technology communities, we are focused on improving the soft skills of students. Research has identified the need for engineers with better soft skills because a large part of their job is non-technical and involves teamwork, effective communication, and conflict resolution. Engineers need the skill to be employable but also to be responsible, ethical, and aware of the societal impacts of engineering. We believe we can have a positive impact in teaching soft skills to engineers if students engage in a reflective, experiential, and human-centered experience. With this objective in mind, we are developing an undergraduate course that combines these elements by embedding students in OSS communities as contributors and providing them with a safe space for reflection and human-centered learning. Students can contribute by developing code, creating documentation, fixing bugs, improving usability, or performing testing. We plan to develop a positive classroom atmosphere that encourages sharing, reflection, and mutual support for the students while they are contributing to an OSS project.