Hi all,
I'm sure many of you are aware that students at all levels of education are forced to use nonfree software, and more recently, nonfree network services in order to receive their education and fulfil the course requirements (see https://www.gnu.org/education/ for prior writings on this).
I'm having a bad day today because I'm currently a studying at a programme that is an exception to the above, with a lot of focus on using free software. But for some reason, a tutorial today was behind a Google sign-in wall and the lecturer didn't want to export the tutorial (which is just a jupyter notebook file) and upload it on the existing learning management system for students to download and study.
This led me to imagine some possible ways in which the FSFE and/or other organisations in the free software movement could try to work on this topic:
1. A survey of students and instructors about their experiences and/or policies in mandatory nonfree software and nonfree network services in university classrooms (which can establish the magnitude of the problem, and help identify ways to change this)
2. A campaign for instructors to pledge not to mandate the use of nonfree software and network services and/or eliminate them from the curriculum of their courses
Apologies for the hastily written email, but if anyone in the list is interested in this topic, I'd love to here more.
Best, Dem