Getting involved in the Open Energy Dashboard

There are many ways to be involved in the OED project:

• Evaluate the dashboard during its development. This would mean early access to features for your comment. This can be by looking at our development system or plans/mockups of new ideas. Please contact us if you are interested.
• You can provide feedback on proposed designs for the dashboard including graphics, data stored, admin features, etc. Please contact us if you are interested.
• Be involved in the development of the dashboard. This could be anything from coding to language translation. Please contact us if you are interested. If you are interested in getting started as a developer (coder) then please see other information on this.
  • A number of students have done internships with the OED project.
  • Joining a project can be daunting. This project is managed as an educational project and is welcoming to new people. The issues list on GitHub has the tag "good first issue" to indicate it would be something that a new contributor might find doable. We strongly encourage you to contact us and/or put a comment in an issue before you begin work so we know it is being worked on. We work with each person to get them integrated into the project. So, please feel free to contact us and you will be welcomed.
• OED is an educationally-based open source project. As such, we view working with and advancing the learning and career goals of students as a core part of the project. As of the end of summer 2023, 60 people had made non-trivial contributions to the OED project (100 or more line of additions/subtractions according to GitHub). (13 have changed more than 10,000 lines and 21 have changed 1,000-10,000 lines) Note that since a number of students work in teams this is a lower bound estimate on the number of students who have worked significantly with OED. A total of 90 people have contributed to the project. OED has been expanding the number of students and institutions it works with and welcomes new collaborations. During the 2022-23 academic year (Fall 2022 - Summer 2023), OED had 60 total students. We are continuing our substantial help and mentoring even when we have a significant number of students. There are a number of ways that students have engaged with the OED project:
  • A course requires a substantial contribution to an open source project over one semester. The students might work individually or in team(s). About half of the student developers over the past couple of years fall into this category. Students from the RCOS center at RPI taking their open source course and students from California State University Monterey Bay capstone course are examples. Another possibility is a student doing an independent project registered with the institution that revolves around OED. OED has worked with the professors teaching the courses to create appropriate tasks and projects for these students to make sure the work meets the learning objectives. Once the students begin working on OED, the OED project does all the needed help and mentoring to support the students. OED can provide feedback to the professor teaching the course on student work if that is desired.
  • A formal organization outside an academic department engages their students with the OED project. The Computing Talent Initiative that works with CodeDay is an example of this type of engagement. Recently, about half the students working on OED come from such an organization.
  • Students are interested in working on a project outside their school to enhance their knowledge and experience. OED generally gets 2-5 students a year doing this type of work. The student generally approaches the OED project and the process is similar to getting an internship (see above). While the majority of these students are doing this work outside their college/university, OED can provide the needed information to allow the student to formally register the work for academic credit.
  • A course might require a single, limited open source contribution as an assignment. A few students have done these smaller contributions.
  • A professor wants to integrate OED into a course or department. In this case the professor gains a reasonable level of understanding of the OED project and may even direct the students' work. OED is willing to mentor a professor to learn about the project and how it can be used to meet their academic objectives. We are also willing to offer the same level of support we do to students who work on OED in a course where it is not as tightly integrated. The project is generally interested in forming relationships to the extent of interest to an institution, department and/or professor. This could be everything from a loose arrangement to a course/department becoming core members of the project with ongoing collaborations.
• To appreciate the student experience in more depth and see their thoughts on working with the OED project, see videos of student responses to questions about their experience working with the OED project.
• Learn how you can use OED for your energy/resource data. The OED project is always willing to give extra help to any institution that has student developers that also want to utilize our dashboard. There is an sample academic uses page that shows how OED could be used to support academic goals.