So, as things have developed, I'm rethinking a lot of what I thought we might try to do. This is an update both to the syllabus and to my March 18 emails.
Starting Monday, March 23, I will resume holding class meetings in IRC at 9am EDT/1300 UTC. These will be logged as usual. Attendance is not strictly required, but this will be one of your options for your required check-ins.
If we have a full agenda and good attendance, we might use all the time. If attendance is sparse and I've added what I think is necessary already into the meeting log, I'll maybe only hang around until, say, 9:30am. If you'd like to attend but know you'll be late and would like to make sure I'm in channel past 9:30, please let me know by email or IRC at least 15 minutes before class starts.
I will no longer be requiring the 4 journal entries per week rate, but we will continue the option of using the journal. I encourage you to continue using the journal because it remains a very flexible way to let me know not just what you are doing, but even that you are doing it. See check-ins below in which using the journal is one option.
Because a great deal of GitHub remains proprietary and centralized, I try not to rely heavily on many of its features, and workflows that depend on those features, and that can't be used readily outside of GitHub.
That said, if I'm going to use a proprietary, centralized web service for remote collaboration, I'd pick the you-can-use-it-even-once-you-graduate GitHub any day over various of the heavily localized and restrictively-licensed learning management systems.
So, I'll be looking to immerse us further into the ways of GitHub to support our collaborative work on the final projects. Stay tuned (particularly to the course wiki site).
We need some way to stay in touch and to get feedback from each other in terms of how we're doing. I will look for at least as many check-ins from you as there would have been regularly scheduled class times. That is, in a full week of classes, at least 3 check-ins.
A check-in is one of the following:
Attendance at a synchronous IRC meeting,
a substantial journal entry about progress on your work and any questions or concerns, or
an email either directly to me or to the floss-seminar mailing list with substantive commentary on your progress and with any questions or concerns.
Grading: The journal and attendance points will be combined and distributed across these check-ins.
We'll be holding virtual FOSS Hours Thursday evenings from 5pm to 6pm (2100-2200 UTC) using videoconferencing. I may also hold videoconferencing office hours at other times, by arrangment. I expect we'll have enough bandwidth to do simultaneous voice and text chat, we'll have to see how well the video works with the constraints of everyone's bandwidth. There will be no required videoconferencing or video production required by students.
Additional bugfixes accepted by upstreams continue to count as pure extra credit (eg, increasing the numerator "points earned" without also increasing the denominator "points possible").
Meetups are clearly not going to happen anymore. Meetup points will be removed from the default final grade tally. I will try to figure out how to include as additional assignments any meetups you've already done (you can still report meetups you've done, if you haven't already). If you have or will report meetups already done, points earned and total points possible will both go up. They aren't pure extra credit.
We will complete the two remaining projects, but in modified form. See COVID-commarch for the pending project. I will continue to work towards something for the final project, but plan to have further discussion and to gather further feedback about that once class begins again.