KommGame: A Reputation Environment for Teaching Open Source Software

Abstract

Over past several years the importance of teaching open source software in universities is increasing with the advent of open source as a development and business model. A novel, student centric approach of teaching open source was tried out at Tampere University of Technology where a new environment called KommGame was introduced to assist in teaching open source development. This environment includes a reputation system to motivate learners to participate. In this thesis, presents an approach of teaching open source and how the KommGame environment was employed to teach open source software. The thesis is divided into three parts: background study, implementation and evaluation. In the background study part, issues related to open source software education, reputation systems and reputation model for teaching are discussed. Customization of reputation model for open source education is all considered. In the implementation part, different components of KommGame environment are investigated, architecture and implementation of each component is discussed. All possible use case scenarios are also covered in implementation part. In the evaluation part, details of KommGame environment, course setup are discussed and finally evaluation of KommGame environment is based on the open source course experience.