Master Programme in Free Software

an example of curriculum building

Keynote by David Megias, co-director Master Programme in the Spanish University UOC.

This presentation overviews the Master Programme in Free Software, which constitutes an example of free software curriculum building. This Master programme is currently offered by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), which is internationally recognised as the first institution to provide distance education of university degrees using exclusively the Internet as the basis of the academic activity.

It is well known that the free software (FS) and the open source movements have gained widespread acceptance by both academia and industry in the last few years. As an academic institution, the UOC is deeply interested in this movement and FS applications are commonly used in several of our departments. However, we reckon that the free and open source software technologies are still far from reaching a relevant position in the market compared to that of proprietary software. We think that one of the reasons why FS is not more widely used is the short number of academic courses in this technology. It is widely accepted that the people in the FS community usually acquire and exchange knowledge by visiting different web pages and discussing in forums. However, many end users, and specially the typical Information Technologies (IT) professionals, do not feel comfortable with this learning model and are discouraged to try FS. There was a gap of guided and tutored education in this area which should be filled in.

For these reasons, we decided to offer an International Master Programme in Free Software since November 2003. This Master programme, which is taught in panish and Catalan, is devoted to provide with an integral education on the different aspects related to the FS technology. Among others, the courses which have been designed for the master degree are concerned with the philosophy and the history of the FS movement, operating systems, computer networking, web management, database management, software development, laws and licenses, etc. The student could choose among these courses according to some suggested itineraries with four possible specialisations: Network and systems administrator, Software developer, Web and e-business administrator and Information Systems manager. More than 350 students have enrolled this Master programme since its creation in November 2003.

In addition, the UOC participates in the MoLOS (Master on Libre/Open Source Software) group, which is devoted to the development of a common curriculum in free software which could be shared by different European universities. This group involves about 20 lecturers from Italy, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Norway, Latvia and Denmark (among others) and has met several times since 2002. Nowadays, the group is discussing a proposal for a common Master programme of 90 ECTS: 30 ECTS in core courses, 30 ECTS in elective courses and 30 ECTS in Practicum and Master's thesis.

The UOC's Master programme if FS has been recently adapted to the new European Higher Education Space (EHES) and is converging to the MoLOS proposal. From September 2006, this Master programme will be officially recognised by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education. The new programme consists of 60 ECTS which can be taken in a year by full-time students. These 60 ECTS are divided into 20 ECTS of mandatory (core) courses, 25 ECTS in elective courses of different specialities and 15 ECTS in Practicum and Master's thesis.

Finally, some questions are suggested for the panel's discussion, for example: Why do we want to include Free Software (FS) and Open Standards (OS) in the curriculum? What kind of contents should be incorporated into a curriculum on FS and OS? Is it really necessary to develop an educative programme on FS or would it be enough to include some FS applications within the existing graduate programmes? Or, which are the factors that hold back FS and OS in education?