In India many engineering colleges asks their students to work on projects as part of internship program (sometimes as summer internship). Most of the time these internships are unpaid, and not a full time one.
In the case of completion of the internship, they need a certificate letter explaining their work, printed on a formal looking pad.
I need permission from council to create one such pad design with help from design team, and then use it to provide certificate to any such student who will help Fedora project.
Certificates are must in most of the colleges, and that is why many of the students can not work on anything related to FOSS projects. By allowing this, we can start getting more contributors from the colleges (in India and other similar places).
How to measure success of the internship work?
We will make sure that the student understand, and work with upstream Fedora community only. This way each subproject can actually measure the impact of the work from the students. We will have at least one mentor per student project (sometimes they might work in groups).
I talked to Kushal, and to clarify "pad" means "letterhead". It's also not necessary to use the word "internship", which I think we want to avoid because of possible employment connotations.
Kushal says that basically, it just needs to say:
Maybe we could call it "Certificate of Participation".
This fits well with https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives/University_Involvement_Initiative, I think — Kushal is going to talk to Remy about this.
Presumably, we'll have a set of named mentors authorized to issue these?
have a set of named mentors authorized to issue these?
+1, sounds like a good plan to me
Replying to [comment:1 mattdm]:
Presumably, we'll have a set of named mentors authorized to issue these? I am not sure how much volume will be but good to have it signed by FPL. It can happen through ticketing. Having authorized mentor looks good idea but may be it can be one from Fedora project who has guided and helped student to achieve his target.
Couple of comments, but generally +1
1) not sure of a problem with the word "internship" as they are traditionally unpaid. It also is a formal working relationship but I am not sure that matters. My real concern though is that most universities require the formal relationship (and the internship word) to give credit to students.
2) I an really surprised this isn't a formal process already. How do we make this something on the priority list? I am sure it isn't just blocking Indian students.
3) finally, +1 on fpl sig. Would add "how about the whole council?" also, this should be published and promoted as having contributed (a la gsoc) post the end of the internship
Are we talking about physical signatures here?
Replying to [comment:5 mattdm]:
I hope not. Physical signatures are not required in most cases.
In India we do not have to call the program the internship. It can be mentioned as project work or just project. Like "Jon Doe did a project on XYZ successfully under Fedora Project. He/she completed the project on time, the source code is available at URL and the work is licensed under ABCD license." We can confirm the text later, and may be based on the region.
There are many students who are waiting for a response from us for long time on the same. So fast tracking this will help us a lot.
+1 on credentialing student work with a piece of paper, howsoever we title it.
In addition to the physical artifact of a certificate, I think it would be pretty straight forward to also provide a Fedora Badge as well on http://badges.fedoraproject.org.
I would be more than willing to flesh out the concept Kushal, and help to file the ticket on https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-badges/
If we really wanted to go the extra mile, we could also 3D print the badge too, and send it along with the paper :D
13:56:26 langdon │ can i propose something else... i am not sure i care how much work it is .. as long │ as it is "formal" ... so .. i think to be eligible for a letter... you must have 1) │ written a formal proposal with goals and deadlines 2) have a mentor who approves 3) │ complete on time (as assessed by mentor)
Okay, so, to repost what Langdon said above in more readable format.... In order to get such a certificate/letter, students must:
I think this is good; as noted above, we need to have a set of named mentors. Probably a new FAS group? Maybe the council could appoint some initial mentors, and from then on membership could be maintained by the mentors group itself? Or, do we have some existing group we want to reuse?
From the meeting, I think everyone was in favor if we can get these specifics nailed down, so let's do that. Is there anything beyond the three requirements above that we want or need to add?
Replying to [comment:10 mattdm]:
There is a Fedora Mentors List, but I'm not sure how active it is, or if it is even the right place for this (It seems to be named properly at the very least.) https://lists.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/mentors
Perhaps I would also add that proposals get posted publicly somewhere (Mentor List, other lists directly related to project work, a new page on the wiki) so students can get feedback and exposure?
Replying to [comment:11 decause]:
Looks like that's an idea that never took off in 2005; gdk tried to get it going sometime in 2006 and that didn't take either. But, seems like a decent place to start anyway... maybe this time it'll work. (Actually serious; the difference being precisely because of having a formalized program behind it.)
Replying to [comment:12 mattdm]:
Replying to [comment:11 decause]: There is a Fedora Mentors List, but I'm not sure how active it is, or if it is even the right place for this (It seems to be named properly at the very least.) https://lists.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/mentors Looks like that's an idea that never took off in 2005; gdk tried to get it going sometime in 2006 and that didn't take either. But, seems like a decent place to start anyway... maybe this time it'll work. (Actually serious; the difference being precisely because of having a formalized program behind it.)
Maybe.
Perhaps I would also add that proposals get posted publicly somewhere (Mentor List, other lists directly related to project work, a new page on the wiki) so students can get feedback and exposure? Have a formal, written proposal with goals and deadlines. Have this approved by a Fedora mentor (at which point it will be posted to the Fedora contributor blog) Have completed the work, as assessed by that mentor.
Sure, that seems fine.
My only concern with this whole concept is that we're going to run very short on Mentors and find ourselves in the same situation we currently have with packaging sponsors.
I have mentored a few student groups in India over the past several years, and like the plan proposed in comment 13.
Also, I was speaking with Jiri Eischmann about internships in Brno, and he shared the following framework they use to track such projects:
https://diplomky.redhat.com/
That framework is open source, and we can use it if it seems beneficial. (If tweaking the framework is necessary, the tweaks themselves could be a project students could undertake!):
https://github.com/jcechace/Thesis-management-system
After meeting with Kushal at FLOCK, and since no one has had any other objections, let's move forward with our first batch of students as discussed :)
@decause will be council member responsible for helping Kushal and other mentors via CommOps team.
Excellent. !! I will be at [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Release_Party_F22_Aurangabad Fedora 22 release event] in Aurangabad, India next week. Around 300+ students will be there. Will definitely highlight this.
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