Higher Ed Working Group: Democratizing Cloud Native Education

[CathPag]

Last update: July 28,2023

Are you part of faculty and interested in participating? Join the #higher-ed channel on CNCF Slack.

Current priority: recruit a diverse set of faculty from a variety of institution types and varied racial, socio-economic backgrounds

Problem statement

Cloud native is developing fast, but textbooks take a long time to produce. Consequently, computer science (CS) students hardly learn about the newest technologies, and it is up to them to get up to speed after they finish their studies. Additionally, high-quality computer science education is only available to a few students worldwide. Smaller colleges, vocational schools, and those in underdeveloped countries often lack the internal know-how to prepare their students for the competitive tech market.

Without a widely accessible cloud native curriculum any teacher or professor can tap into, we perpetuate the status quo: only students with access to the best education or mentors who can guide them are exposed to the newest technologies and are more likely to have access to the highest-paying jobs in tech.

Vision

A volunteer-based group led by computer science professors from universities worldwide supported by industry veterans can help democratize cloud native education. While the main goal is to develop a cloud native curriculum (or curricula) accessible to any university, there are many more benefits.

This group will provide a platform for CS faculty to exchange ideas and lessons learned, enabling them to become better teachers. Creating a global network of professors will foster collaboration and more opportunities for students worldwide. Injecting industry expertise will ensure that professors are teaching students the current best practices. Overall, cloud native education will improve, creating a new generation of highly qualified cloud native engineers. Centering this work in the CNCF ensures that the education can be vendor-neutral while still allowing vendors to adapt the curricula to their products.

Mission

Empower faculty worldwide, particularly those that serve the most underrepresented, to provide independent, high-quality cloud native education to their students, giving them the tools they need to compete for the highest-paying jobs in tech.

Audience (membership)

The group must incorporate faculty members, industry experts, and students to ensure high-quality materials derived from varied perspectives.

Audience: Faculty

Goals

• Attract a diverse set of faculty from various institution types and of varied racial, socio-economic, etc background. A mix of clinical, teaching, and tenured/tenure track faculty will also improve the outcomes of the program.

Strategies

• Partner with academic organizations (e.g. AMC, IEEE) for alignment and support
• Partner with private industry funding partners to support faculty members to contribute to the work
• Partner with public funding partners (e.g. NSF, ACM) to support faculty members to contribute to the work

Tactics

• Attempt to affiliate with the appropriate ACM SIG to ensure alignment
• Seek and apply for public funding to support faculty members & students developing content
• Communicate with CNCF Platinum Partners about funding support for faculty and students

Deliverables

• Affiliation with one or more academic program “SIGs”
• Submit 2-3 grant proposals to support future faculty

Audience: Industry Professionals

Goals

• Attract industry professionals with experience developing cloud native applications to ensure the curricula are tactical and current.

Strategies

• Including the professional audience should be deferred until the sequence has been developed
• Attract professionals by appealing to:
  • Their sense of giving back to the community
  • Helping to provide future employees
  • Raising their stature in the CNCF / Industry

Tactics

• Develop marketing materials, including a badge, to attract members and promote members
• Deliverables
• LinkedIn and GH badges for association
• A logo
• Conference talk

Audience: Students

Goals

• Attract students to:
  • Help write content
  • Test the accessibility of content
  • Provide feedback/perspective on content

Strategies

• Including the student audience should be deferred until the sequence & course have at least been identified
• Work with affiliated faculty to identify student candidates
• Use the various CNCF marketing channels to advertise to students about work
• Use the existing university marketing channels to advertise to students about work (e.g. CS department mailing list)

Tactics

• Leverage faculty grant funding to pay students to build content
• Encourage faculty members to use their existing students / funding to contribute to the project
• Investigate various student coding programs for support (e.g. Google Summer of Code)
• Work with the CNCF marketing channel owners to determine appropriate marketing materials to produce

Deliverables

• Develop marketing materials including sample email content, website badging, physical signage to be provided to faculty for distribution at their universities.
• Develop marketing materials as guided by the CNCF marketing channel owners
• LinkedIn and GH badges for association
• A logo

Audience: Faculty (work product)

While in the simplest sense, the audience of the content we develop is students, the real target audience is their instructors. In other words, we need to produce the materials that are not only provided to students but also the background material and explanations such that an instructor can feel confident teaching it to students. We also are probably not developing just one course, but rather a sequence that builds upon each other, either expanding in breadth or breaking off more deeply to address a particular topic. For now, we will only focus on the Faculty audience.

Goals

• Identify candidate faculty and institutions to act as stakeholders and provide feedback – some with significant cloud native knowledge and some with very little
• Develop an initial sequence of 3 courses that have titles, descriptions, and 1-2 learning outcomes
• Fully develop one course in the sequence as determined by the working group
• Identify prerequisite knowledge for the course to be developed and suggest, existing courses that would provide the knowledge

Tactics

• Identify and build the sequence
• Determine course to be developed
• Identify expected prerequisite knowledge
• Identify existing courses to provide the knowledge
• Produce course materials as per Deliverables
• Identify assignments, labs, etc that need to be produced
• Identify stakeholder group
• Regular cadence of reviews by stakeholders

Deliverables

• Course Sequence
• Single Course
  • Prerequisites and suggested sources
  • Full syllabus
  • Full set of lectures
  • Outline of assignments, labs, etc
• Stakeholder input/reviews have been captured (may not be completely addressed)

cc @langdon @jeefy @castrojo

[JustinCappos]

There are already some materials for this, mostly tilted toward security aspects. This is more lecture slides, assignments, etc. than a textbook. However, the new security assessment guide for the CNCF also relates to this and will be closer to a text book. I'd be happy to share more information if this fits under this effort.

[CathPag]

Sounds great. Thank you! The more we can repurpose, the better. There is probably a lot of great content out there, so it might be a matter of bundling it so it makes sense for a higher-ed course.

[JustinCappos]

I'd also love to hear from people interested in using this to understand more. I have educational materials that have been used at a lot of schools (everything from 2 year community colleges, up to tier 1 research colleges) and they absolutely need to be tailored a bit to the audience and instructor.

[TheFoxAtWork]

@CathPag Do you envision this group to also leverage the TAG's work and activities as a mechanism for students to practically apply some of the course material they learn? Teaching and informing on these concepts is exceptional, allowing students to showcase their learnings through participation in TAG and projects could assist in them building experience that could be valuable for their education as well as career.

[parispittman]

i also wonder if this group should be its own TAG or if this group should rescope to community strategy vs contributor strategy. the initiative is needed and great but kinda blows the scope of this one.

[CathPag]

Those are great points, @TheFoxAtWork! I'll let @langdon answer that question. He's a faculty member and will be leading this effort.

@parispittman, my initial thought was for this to be its own TAG, too. @caniszczyk suggested it be a WG under the TAG CS. Maybe Chris can answer that question?

Wherever this lives, I do think it'd be good if it could have its own repo and website.

[langdon]

So, @TheFoxAtWork , I definitely think that experiential learning is an integral part of any good curriculum. However, I believe there's a place for preparing students to do the work, so they don't all have to 'learn in the fire' (like many of us did :) ). But, I think that part of this work should include collaborating with other parts of the ecosystem to identify lists of 'easy bugs' and establish a 'mentor pool.' This way, students have somewhere to go next, and it would be both awesome and make a lot of sense. I also would like students to be involved in producing the 'projects' (including homework, assignments, etc.) that other students would be doing in the classes, which would offer similar but incomplete exposure to 'in practice.' I'm also very open to other ideas or ways of thinking; this is just what was on my mind.

[langdon]

We've been doing well in recruiting, receiving many valuable questions and feedback. While I believe it's wise to give it a bit more time (especially since this is a popular vacation period for academics), I suggest we begin planning for a kickoff meeting. How about the week of August 27th-28th? I'm unsure of the best method to align our schedules—perhaps using a tool like LettuceMeet? I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.

[kaiwalyakoparkar]

Hey folks, I am CNCF Ambassador and a student from India. This sounds so interesting and I would like to volunteer in this efforts :)

[CathPag]

Thanks for your interest, @kaiwalyakoparkar. We'll definitely need student input, but it's a little early. Please do follow the conversation. We'll make a public announcement when we are ready to team up with students :)

[profcorey]

Hi @langdon I would like to attend the kickoff meeting when it's set. I may be traveling the week of the 28th, but will do my best to available to attend the kickoff meeting. I'm excited and looking forward to this effort, thank you!

[ahmetkasif]

Hi, I would like to join the meeting from Bursa Technical University CS Dept. Thanks for all the effort and keep up the good work 👍🏻

[halil-bugol]

I have been creating Cloud Native technologies and cloud laboratories in different universities in Turkey for about 2 years. In these laboratories, studies were carried out on various cloud technologies, certification programs were organized, and I opened a course included in the official university program. In this 8-month course, a total of 6 exams and 4 certificates are given. Since the given certificate is accredited to the Turkish State System and the European Union by the university, it has a similar function to the diploma. I would love to support the subject and open these laboratories to CNCF.

[sergioarmgpl]

I have been working since 2018 to adopt cloud native theory and software in the course curriculum in a public university in Guatemala, I have a repo that I can share with this initiative.

[langdon]

Hi all, we have decided to have our first meeting on Thurs, Aug 31 at 12pm Eastern. We are thinking "last thursday of the month at 12 eastern (4pm UTC)" to ease memory. I would propose that we follow the UTC time to avoid challenges with daylight savings but we can confirm that in the meeting. Thanks to @CathPag, you can add it to your calendars here:

Gmail Outlook

Please confirm that it imported successfully, outlook decided it was 12 UTC for me.

[sergioarmgpl]

I have this repo with the content that I use to teach operating systems and Cloud Native https://github.com/sergioarmgpl/operating-systems-usac-course