Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
tory pages on the wiki, it was possible to see that students spent significantly more time
working on their open source hardware projects than they did on their conventional home-
work projects assigned and tracked in conventional courseware. The conversations in the
discussion board about the project were also all positive and encouraging. Students found
the work in Appropedia exciting and interesting. Several noted that the wiki coding was
challenging. At the end of the semester, the students made only positive comments about
the project in their teacher evaluations, and several students expressed gratitude for being
exposed to the assignment. The Appropedia Foundation was also pleased with the stu-
dents' work because it had filled some of the holes in Appropedia's coverage of energy.
Some student projects were even chosen to be highlighted on Appropedia's Welcome
page.
Appropedia is now used by many universities as a repository of open source hardware
that fits into the sustainable development classification. In addition, many top universities
now feature courses dedicated to developing sustainable appropriate technologies (AT) in
their engineering or science curricula (Pearce, 2009). With the help of the open source
hardware paradigm, these schools can integrate AT research development and diffusion
into the university curriculum using virtual service learning.
There are many other ways to integrate open source hardware into the classroom for
the benefit of the students. The only requirement to do so in many cases is a minor modi-
fication to a standard project to include sharing the designs following an open model. As
more of our educational system begins to rely on Internet-based collaboration for student
projects, the simplicity of integrating open source hardware into the classroom becomes
relatively straightforward in any field.
