Mentoring and Training Guide for Open Source Hardware in Academia

One of the key incentives for creating open source hardware is its educational use. Questions such as "is it better to learn on the job with hands-on experience or with extensive prior training?" motivated us to write this guidebook on mentoring and training. While we may never get a definitive answer, the widespread availability of open source hardware eliminates the need to decide on one learning style over another, instead allowing students to learn in a manner that is best catered to their individual needs.

In addition to accommodating different learning styles, open source hardware also serves to bring together creators from different countries, age groups, levels of education, and more. This not only increases the user base of open source hardware, but also diversifies the set of educational tools available for students.

The recommendations in this guidebook are based on evidence compiled from:

• Feedback by past and recent designers, users, and testers of hardware—built by the Columbia Experimental Gravity group—in an open-source context from the perspective of their diverse careers and life experiences.

• Input collected from members of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA, IceCube, and VERITAS Collaborations* on whether and how hardware developed in large international collaborative settings can benefit open source science, with an emphasis on open source hardware.

• Recent experience of high-school and college students who participated in an end-to-end exercise of testing publicly-available documented hardware that was written over a decade and a half ago.

Based on the feedback collected from these various sources, we have synthesized to following tips meant to guide both educators and students on how best to take advantage of the teaching opportunities that open source hardware presents.