Get started in open source with the CHAOSS Education Project

Learn open source the CHAOSS way: Free video courses for contributors and maintainers.

Starting and navigating open source can be challenging for several reasons. In response, the CHAOSS Education Project aims to develop materials to bridge these gaps for everyone. The CHAOSS Education Project is designed to help people join open source projects or communities, providing much-needed information for people to ensure an easy start in open source. Specifically, we propose to help high school and university students, open source project maintainers, and anyone interested in participating in and contributing to open source projects.

The CHAOSS Education project strives to make open source more understandable by providing educational resources and support to bridge the knowledge gap often found when hoping to participate in an open source project. The CHAOSS Education Project also provides opportunities to interact face-to-face with some CHAOSS leaders and enhance your learning experience with easy-to-access content.

Read more: Using metrics to improve open source communities

How CHAOSS Education helps you contribute to open source

The goal of the CHAOSS Education Project is to develop easy-to-use educational materials for open source newcomers and maintainers, and we need your help to create these materials.

The CHAOSS Education project currently offers short video recordings as resources to help people participate in open sources

These focus on general open source contributions and a more focused overview of contributing to the CHAOSS Project. They offer detailed information to help you begin or solidify your journey in open source. In the future, we also plan to add half-day workshops.

Delivering CHAOSS Education Project via videos:

With short (5-10 minute), straight-to-the-point videos starting with Open Source 101 (Basis of open source). A video format has a few advantages:  

• Flexibility: Videos can be accessed at any time and from any location.
• Availability: Once created, videos can be easily distributed and reused.
• Scalability: Videos can reach a large audience without the need for physical attendance.

The CHAOSS Education project is designed for everyone, but it primarily targets newcomers to open source, as well as maintainers and other people who are interested in learning more about open source and CHAOSS. It’s crucial to stay engaged with this project because the workshops and 5-10 minute, self-paced learning videos help you avoid the frustration of unanswered questions and quickly get you up to speed in navigating open source projects. The CHAOSS education project is divided into modules and modules are categorised as follows:

1. Welcome to Open Source 101 – Taking that first step into open source.
2. All About CHAOSS – Learning about the CHAOSS community.
3. Practitioner Guides – Learning about metrics and how to implement them in projects.
4. More on the way.

What’s there for open source beginners: 

• A general knowledge about open source.
• Clear explanations on how to start contributing to open source or building a career in it.
• Easy access to resources and direct guidance, covering everything from Open Source 101 to advanced topics.
• Deep understanding of CHAOSS metrics, software, and programs.

What’s there for open source maintainers:

The CHAOSS Education project offers materials to help maintainers mentor and guide contributors and opportunities to contribute to the CHAOSS project. It also provides materials to help maintainers learn about metrics and how to implement them in their projects. Lastly, CHAOSS Education courses can be used as training materials for your projects. 

Read more: Measuring open source community health with Savannah

Getting started with the CHAOSS Education Project

The following categories and topics are now available on our Moodle platform.  

Category 1: Welcome to open source 101

1. How to start a career in open source
2. Introduction to open source & collaboration platforms
3. Popular open source projects
4. Open source in business
5. Open source security
6. Newcomers in open source

Category 2: All about CHAOSS

1. Introduction to CHAOSS
2. CHAOSS governance
3. CHAOSS context groups

Category 3: CHAOSS practitioner guides

1. Introduction to practitioner guides
2. Contributor sustainability
3. Responsiveness
4. Organizational participation
5. Security

To consume these courses you will need to create an account on Moodle following the process outlined in this post.

Learn more: Contributing to CHAOSS

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• Measuring open source community health with Savannah
• What is prompt engineering?
• What is OpenTelemetry?

This article is adapted from “CHAOSS Education Project” by Peculiar C. Umeh, and is republished with permission from the author.