By Peter Organisciak, João Menezes & Eugenia Ortiz
A guest post from one of our Crowdsource Crowdsourcing project teams who have spent the last few weeks tackling the Student Outreach channel. Below they describe their vision for this channel.
Introduction
The Student Outreach channel is focused on exposing students to experimental design thinking through course co-created modules between Mozilla and educators. This channel would offer a link between Mozilla and institutions, especially their teachers and students.
The student audience is primarily those in:
- Human-computer interaction (HCI)
- Computer Science
- Robotics
- Engineering
- Social Sciences
- Arts
Two sides of the coin
We propose for this channel to have two facets: the facilitator side and the student side.
The facilitator side would be a repository of tutorials, technical tools, technical materials, and theme ideas, created by members of the Mozilla community. It would also have a space for discussion among facilitators.
The student side would offer a space for students to share their output with a larger community, primarily through a show and tell space.
How will Mozilla Labs support?
Mozilla Labs are fully committed to supporting both students and institutions. A framework of open design and research activities is currently being work on work with a few early initiatives already in the pipeline.
Latest technologies and work culture in software development will be exposed by providing:
- multiple outlets to help students expose their work and ideas
- exposure to Mozilla staff and leading industry professionals
- guest lectures
- mentor-ship, feedback and guidance
Early initiatives
There have already been some initiatives from collaborators that are somehow related to this channel. We are studying these events to get feedback from people who participated, and see how to better motivate institutions and tutors to have a Mozilla-related course module in their program.
Some examples include:
- Bauhaus University – An open interaction design course ‘Designing for Action‘, facilitated by Jan Dittrich under the supervision of Prof. Jens Geelhaar
- UC Berkeley and Stanford Data-analysis projects
- University of Sydney – A collaborative course with students within the Interaction Design Studio focused on the theme of ‘Designing for Social‘
- City University London – HCI students involved with Design Jam London #1
Feedback
Remember, this channel is still an idea in incubation within the framework of the proposed evolution of the Mozilla Labs Concept Series.
We’d love to hear your thoughts – What would you like to see in a student outreach channel?