Students line up for new free software master at open universities
Two of Europe's open universities, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Spain and Open Universiteit in the Netherlands, are about to start the first courses of what will become a Master programme on free and open source software and open standards, The Free Technology Academy (FTA). The program could prove popular, the number of early registrations shows.
The registration for the first three courses at the FTA opened just last week, and already more students have signed-up than initially hoped for, says Wouter Tebbens of the Free Knowledge Institute, who is helping to get the academy started. "We thought to get about twenty students registered per course. But quite a few more than that have already signed on. Students are joining from all over Europe, from Brazil, from Mozambique and from other countries. We are very happy with the response."
The FTA will begin on 25 January 2010. The first two courses tutored are 'the concepts of Free Software and Open Standards' and 'The GNU/Linux Operating System'. The programme for the second semester lists 'Web applications development', 'Software development' and 'Economical models'.
Courses are in English and the first courses will be taught by teachers from the open universities. "We are of course still looking for other teachers, and many free technology experts have expressed being interested to help."
Much of the current learning material is taken from a previous project on free software training materials by the Free Knowledge Institute and from the current master in free technology at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Tebbens: "We are working to get more of the courses currently offered in Spanish and Catalan translated into English."
The FTA is also developing new course material, he says. "And we are looking for opportunities to work with other organisations to offer additional courses."
Discounts
The educational materials used for the FTA will be published on-line under free licenses that allow them to be used, modified and distributed for any purpose. The tuition fees for the tutored courses are kept low, the FTA explains on its site, "to make participation in its tutored courses accessible to everyone."
The tuition fee for a course in the FTA is set at 380 euro. The academy is also giving discounts to those who register early, up to 50 percent for those who sign up before 7 December.
More information:
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Other masters on OSS currently available
University Rey Juan Carlos: http://master.libresoft.es/
and the University of Extremadura: http://www.unex.es/eweb/msl/index.html