Introduction

This week in our Open Source Software Development class, we had the chance to watch more final presentations and reflect on how different teams tackled their projects. Our team also presented our work on Oppia, which was a great opportunity to showcase the work we’ve done and the implementation of feedback along the way from Professor Joanna.

Update on Group Project – Oppia

Even though our presentation is behind us, our team has stayed engaged with Oppia by continuing to add meaningful content to the platform. Over the past week, we’ve worked on new lessons and also expanded translations to help make Oppia’s learning materials more accessible to a wider audience. It’s been rewarding to contribute beyond code, and we’re focused on creating high-quality, easy-to-follow educational content.

Putting together and delivering our presentation made us realize just how much we’ve learned—about navigating large codebases, collaborating as a team, and contributing in a thoughtful and sustainable way. Seeing our work laid out slide by slide helped us appreciate how far we’ve come since the start of the semester.

Reflections on Other Presentations

Watching the other teams present this week was one of the most interesting parts of class. It was clear that each group brought a different perspective to open source. Some teams leaned heavily into coding and technical problem solving, while others took a more creative or design-focused approach, prioritizing things like user experience, accessibility, and content creation. I really appreciated seeing that range—it broke the idea that open source is only about writing code.

It was especially insightful to hear from the other team working on Oppia, who faced many of the same challenges we did: figuring out how to contribute meaningfully within a large and active codebase, dealing with issues getting picked up quickly by the community, and communicating effectively with maintainers. It was reassuring to know we weren’t alone in those struggles.

Altogether, these presentations were a great reminder that open source development can be approached in many different ways. Whether through technical contributions, creative problem solving, or thoughtful collaboration, every team found their own way to make an impact—and that was really inspiring to see.