<lurk mode=off> Everyone, I'm looking for references to the informal (trans. extracurricular) learning of programming. We all know (or may be) geeks of great prowess who never took a CS course. These people frequently relied on the Internet to receive help, get feedback, etc. Anyone know of any research pieces that detail (or at least reference) this phenomenon? Thanks in advance. /me recedes into shadow... <lurk mode=on> -- http://wiley.ed.usu.edu/ "I'm much more interested in being right today than I am in maintaining that I was right yesterday."
David, are you aware of Infed.org and their Informal Education site http://www.infed.org/ ? There might be something in their archives. It seems to me that informal learning also relates to certain communities of practice, and there might be something in the COPs literature......Alex alex.kuskis@utoronto.ca ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Wiley" <dw2@opencontent.org> To: <air-l@aoir.org> Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 6:23 PM Subject: [Air-l] Informal programming learning?
<lurk mode=off>
Everyone,
I'm looking for references to the informal (trans. extracurricular) learning of programming. We all know (or may be) geeks of great prowess who never took a CS course. These people frequently relied on the Internet to receive help, get feedback, etc. Anyone know of any research pieces that detail (or at least reference) this phenomenon?
Thanks in advance. /me recedes into shadow...
<lurk mode=on>
"I'm much more interested in being right today than I am in maintaining that I was right yesterday."
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there is, as i recall, at least one such work at opensource.mit.edu, i'd be interested in hearing of others. <lurk mode= on> ! error mode not present On Monday, January 27, 2003, at 06:23 PM, David Wiley wrote:
<lurk mode=off>
Everyone,
I'm looking for references to the informal (trans. extracurricular) learning of programming. We all know (or may be) geeks of great prowess who never took a CS course. These people frequently relied on the Internet to receive help, get feedback, etc. Anyone know of any research pieces that detail (or at least reference) this phenomenon? jeremy hunsinger jhuns@vt.edu on the ibook www.cddc.vt.edu www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy/blog
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in my survey of open source projects on sourceforge.net i found that 58% of all respondents had formal training in either computer science or information technology (48% of total respondents had university level training), whereas 42% were self-taught. survey is here http://osdn.com/bcg and i am currently (finally!!) in the midst of writing an article on the survey findings -- =============================================== Karim R. Lakhani MIT Sloan School of Management MIT Free/Open Source Software Research Project e-mail: lakhani@mit.edu voice: 617-851-1224 fax: 617-344-0403 http://opensource.mit.edu http://freesoftware.mit.edu http://mit.edu/lakhani/www ==============================================
You can also look at Batt, Christopherson, et al's work on Silicon Alley. While not centered on informal programming practices, they do identify much of the technical learning in the Alley takes place outside of formal workplaces and formal training. Net Working: Work patterns and workforce policies for the new media industry http://www.epinet.org/books/network.html is one source, other papers have been published out of this survey. Gina Gina Neff Research Associate Center on Organizational Innovation Columbia University New York, NY 10027
The situated activity people have written on the informality of learning in the workplace, right now I am thinking of Julian Orr's (1996) Talking about machines, ILR, imprint of Cornell University Press. While it might be a bit dated, Orr draws on the work of Ken Kusterer (1978) to define worker's knowledge of the job into three categories: a) knowledge of routine processes b) knowledge of potential variations c) social knowledge Orr's book highlights the fact that the job cannot be learned without the informal input of others, particularly in b)variations and c) social knowledge. The troubleshooting aspect (in the this case Xerox repair staff) mostly happens in the area of c). Teams of programmers work much in the same way, it's the variations and the social knowledge (who to ask, and when to ask them) that are the most helpful in troubleshooting problems, sorry that's a personal observation, when I worked with a team of programmers in a company producing medical instrumentation. Orr's got a nice bibliography on work, might be something for you there. Bonnie Nardi, A small matter of programming, 1991, MIT Press (by memory) might also be helpful and more to the point. Cheers, Denise ===== "I want to focus on my salad" (M. Stewart. 2001) Denise Rall, Sustainable Forestry Mentoring Coordinator & PhD student, School of Education, Southern Cross University, PO Box 157, Lismore, NSW, 2480 Australia Phone +61-2-6624-8627 Fax +61-2-6624-8637 Office (Tuesdays) (02) 6620 3577 Mob 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/edu/research/deniserall/index.html __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
participants (6)
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Alex Kuskis -
David Wiley -
Denise N. Rall -
Gina Neff -
jeremy hunsinger -
Karim R. Lakhani