{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "content": "---\ntitle: \"The road to COMP4020: Radical openness\"\ndescription: \"Making all weekly prototypes visible to every student---source code, deployed\n  apps, the lot. Radical openness as a teaching strategy for COMP4020.\"\ntags: [comp4020]\n---\n\n:::tip\n\nThis post is part of a series I'm writing as I develop\n[COMP4020: Agentic Coding Studio](/blog/2025/12/19/comp4020-rapid-prototyping-for-the-web/).\nSee [all posts in the series](/blog/tag/comp4020/).\n\n:::\n\nOne thing which I've always tried to do in designing new university courses\n(something I've done about half-a-dozen times now) is make things as _open_ as\npossible. This has meant things like:\n\n- having the curriculum (and lecture videos) on a public-facing website under a\n  CC licence rather than locked in the uni's LMS\n- writing up (and sticking to) detailed class policy documents so that the\n  rules, expectations (and consequences for straying from them) are clearly\n  explained to all students in advance\n- making the end-of-class deliverable be a public performance/gig or gallery\n  exhibition (especially for my _Laptop Ensemble_ or _Art & Interaction in New\n  Media_ courses; in fact in those cases a public gig/exhibition is the most\n  authentic assessment I could think of)\n\nFor COMP4020 I'm planning on continuing these practices. However, I'm thinking\nof ways I can push this openness even further. One thing I'm really keen on (and\ndovetails nicely with the\n[studio crit-based core mechanic for the course](/blog/2026/02/20/comp4020-the-core-mechanic/))\nis the idea that the students share _all_ of their weekly prototypes with each\nother. This means they can not only visit the deployed version on the (public) web,\nbut also clone the full source repo.\n\nThis means that if a student finds something cool (or has some notes) about\nanother student's web-based prototype they can (after the class) clone the repo\nthemselves and poke around. I think that one of the weekly provocations will\nrequire this, actually: to take a different student's previous prototype and\nremix it according to the next week's provocation.\n\nBecause we already use a (self-hosted) GitLab server for all code submissions\nthis should be fairly straightforward. I haven't decided whether these\nsubmissions should be fully open (to the public) or just visible to other\nstudents in the class. In terms of the deployments, this is why I like the idea\nof\n[lightweight VMs on the open web](/blog/2026/03/05/comp4020-safety-yolo-and-the-open-web/)\nfor all prototyping---the ability to \"share the link with your mate or your Mum\"\ncomes for free.\n\nThese weekly prototype submissions aren't marked directly; and I'm not sure if\nI'm going to require the same openness about the actual assessed deliverables\n(maybe not?). And we'll need to have mechanisms in place to ensure students\ndon't accidentally commit API tokens or PII or anything else that shouldn't be\nshared.\n\nBut the idea of a radically open community of students building and sharing what\nthey've built is super appealing, and I'm keen to make it happen.\n",
  "createdAt": "2026-05-13T23:14:39.205Z",
  "description": "Making all weekly prototypes visible to every student---source code, deployed apps, the lot. Radical openness as a teaching strategy for COMP4020.",
  "path": "/blog/2026/03/18/radical-openness",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-18T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:tevykrhi4kibtsipzci76d76/site.standard.publication/self",
  "tags": [
    "comp4020"
  ],
  "textContent": "Making all weekly prototypes visible to every student---source code, deployed apps, the lot. Radical openness as a teaching strategy for COMP4020.",
  "title": "The road to COMP4020: Radical openness"
}