Enhancing Open Source Education in South Africa's Technology Universities

1. An Untapped Channel: Open Source Education in the Universities of Technology and Research Labs in South Africa Free Open Source Symposium (FOSS) 2009 Michael AdeyeyeUniversity of Cape Town/Cape Peninsula University of Technology

2. Table of Contents • Introduction • My Research Project • Tools at the Research Labs • Curriculum at the Univ. Of Technology • Problems Encountered by Students • My Efforts at the Univ. and Research Labs • How can the FOSS Communities help?

3. Introduction • I am an Information Technology Lecturer at the Cape Peninsula • University of Technology (CPUT), South Africa. • I am also a Ph.D candidate at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South • Africa. • Although I have been using the Mozilla Firefox since the release of its • ver. 1.0, I started hacking the codebase late 2007. • I developed a Web browser extension called TransferHTTP. It integrates • Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) into the Mozilla Firefox. • I have been the campus rep. for the UCT for some time and now the • regional leader for the Western Province of South Africa.

4. My Research Project • Project Title – A SIP-based hybrid architecture for HTTP Session Mobility. • Statement of Problem • Here is a short demo of my work. • The Clients interaction – http://bit.ly/pQVKX • The Proxy User Interface – http://bit.ly/7XPhc

5. My Research Project • The TransferHTTP Proxy (http://137.158.126.21:8080/session-blocking-app)

6. My Research Project • It is a distributed and a centralized reference system for service • creation. • Services available at the proxy: Web session mobility blocking, Web • session pick-up, Web session forwarding and so-on. • Services available at the client: content sharing, session handoff and • stream media to a call. • Contributions: We created identities in Web browsers and a new social networking service for Web share, session transfer and multimedia sharing among peers. • Dave and I have published two papers in the IEEE WCNC 2009 and WEBIST 2009. The third paper has just been accepted at the IEEE • NTMS, and it will be presented in December.

7. Curriculum at the Univ. Of Technology • For a NationaI Diploma, course offered at the Universities of Technology • include: • - Information Systems • - Development Software • - Systems Software • - Technical Programming • At a conventional University that offers a Bachelor's degree, courses offered • include: • - Information Systems • - Database Systems • - Systems Development • - Commercial Programming • - I. T. Applications

8. Curriculum at the Univ. Of Technology • For a NationaI Diploma, course offered at the Universities of Technology • include: • - Information Systems • - Development Software • - Systems Software • - Technical Programming • At a conventional University that offers a Bachelor's degree, courses offered • include: • - Information Systems • - Database Systems • - Systems Development • - Commercial Programming • - I. T. Applications A Univ. in the US: - Introduction to Information Systems - Fundamentals of Business Information Technologies - Fundamentals of Application Programming - Business Data Communications - Database Management - Systems Analysis and Design

9. Tools at the Research Labs • Having attended a number of local conferences and presentations in • South Africa, I have a fair idea of tools used in some of the labs. • In my lab. (Communication Research Group Lab.), we use many OSS • packages, such as the OpenIMSCore, NS 2 and various telephony • application libraries.

10. Problems Encountered by Students • Finding it difficult to implement what they proposed. • - An example is a friend I met when I started my Web extension • project. He had no clue of how to implement his project, which • required him hacking a Web browser. He is yet to complete his M.Sc. • - Another could not extend the Netbeans IDE. • A colleague of mine had earlier asked me to take an easy way out in my • work. • In the Univ. Of Tech, some students would like to participate in the Open • Source Projects, but they do not know where to start. • It would be very difficult for the ND students to grasp, owing to how the • curriculum is structured.

11. Our efforts at the Univ. & Research Labs • Presentations on the Mozilla Projects and Community October 2008http://picasaweb.google.com/micadeyeye/MozillaCommunityAndProjects1

12. Our efforts at the Univ. & Research Labs • Presentations on the Mozilla Projects and Community September 2009http://picasaweb.google.com/micadeyeye/MozillaCommunityAndProjects2

13. Our efforts at the Univ. & Research Labs • Presentations on the Mozilla Projects and Community September 2009http://picasaweb.google.com/micadeyeye/MozillaCommunityAndProjects2

14. My efforts at the Univ. & Research Labs • Getting students involved in my research work Examples are: • Developing the Windows version of the TransferHTTP extension • Building Firefox on Linux and Windows • Extending some FOSS packages. Examples are integrating an XDMS • or DB into some of the Mobicents converged applications and extending • the PJSIP libraries to support video.

15. How can the FOSS Communities help? • The PG Students • We could help PG students in their research work through presentations, • workshops and the likes. Getting to know that the Mozilla visits Univ. • in the US is awesome. We look to forward to it in Africa, and we would • also want other FOSS organizations to do the same. • They need to know what is happening at the FOSS labs. • The University of Technologies • In the Univ. Of Tech, the FOSS development curriculum could be • introduced at the Bachelor's Degree level at the Univ. Of Tech.

16. Conclusions • As a lecturer said, using open source in the research labs is based on personal interests. • There are very few OSS communities (UCT LEG, UWC FSIU) in the South African Universities, and most of them are inactive. • Although we have the required skill sets, Open Source Education in South Africa is yet to be explored.