What has been the student experience in working on the Open Energy Dashboard

As a humanitarian and educationally-based open source project, OED cares deeply about the student experience. It is our goal to advance the academic and career goals of our student developers. The internships page tells the typical support we give to each student and the getting involved page tells the options for working with the OED project. In April of 2021, the project interviewed three student developers to gain insights into their experience. The students were:

Davin: a third year computer science major at Grinnell College who had worked on the project for about 9 months. They were working on OED independently of their school.
Hannah: a third and last year computer science major at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) who had worked on the project for one semester. They were taking a Rensselaer Center for Open Source (RCOS) class that has each student work on a project for the full semester.
Louis: a second year computer science major at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) who had worked on the project for one semester. They were taking a Rensselaer Center for Open Source (RCOS) class that has each student work on a project for the full semester.

Each student was asked the same series of questions. The videos that follow show the entire student answer. They were edited to remove the question being asked and group students together in answering the same question. The videos are split into three segments where somewhat related questions are in the same segment but students sometimes discussed ideas related to a given question while answering another question. The segments can be watched in any order. The three segments are:

Segment 1 with students answering the questions: Why did you decide to work on the OED project?, What are your general feelings about working on OED?, What did you think about working on a humanitarian project? and How did working on OED differ from coursework?. (length: 8:17)

Segment 2 with students answering the questions: Was the work challenging & meaningful?, Was working on OED a valuable learning experience?, and What were the biggest changes in your ability & confidence from working on OED?. (length: 7:29)

Segment 3 with students answering the questions: How did you overcome challenges in working on OED?, Did you receive the support you needed?, Were you mentored and was it effective? and How do you think working on OED will impact your career?. (length: 7:28)