Development and Application of Open-Source Software

Dear Colleagues,

In 2021, the first volume of this Special Issue on the “Development and Application of Open-Source Software” was announced. During these two years, the ICT context has significantly changed. The massive adoption of technology in education during the COVID-19 pandemic's initial stages (especially in online and hybrid educational contexts) lead to a situation in which educators at all levels had to consider how to take the maximum of technology being back in a face-to-face context. Additionally, the availability of AI-empowered online assistants can highly disrupt educational processes, raising serious ethical issues.

Meanwhile, the IT industry seems to start a new age, in which remote working pros and cons are being discussed while the big tech companies are facing workforce reduction to meet a probable change in the growth trend experienced in the last decade. In this context, open-source software plays a key role, allowing companies to watch the sustainability of the development of the open-source systems that are key to their business model. This aspect is usually addressed by OSPOs (Open-Source Program Offices), which started many years ago in academia and have recently been adopted in the industry. All these changes in the industry highly affect computer science education, being a key issue for the future years to come.

This Special Issue focuses on educational experiences where free/libre/open-source software provides a key value as well as how changes in the IT industry affects education in open course technologies. We invite researchers to contribute original research articles as well as review works on any educational level or context.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Open-source software in education;
• Technology-enhanced learning based on open systems;
• Best practices of open collaboration for online education;
• Challenges for the adoption of open-source solutions in educational contexts;
• Smart open-source environments and educational trends;
• Open-source methodologies and ICT education;
• Case studies of education based on open communities;
• Open-source and inclusive learning;
• The role of open technologies in the educational digital divide.

Dr. Manuel Palomo-Duarte
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.