Open Research Community Accelerator

The Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA) is a student program that grows the impact of academic research by making research products accessible to other academics, local businesses, and community members through open source project. ORCA creates these products through student project teams called Pods — groups of dynamic and passionate students who learn industry open source practices by working on real projects destined for public use. This program is run and funded by the University of Vermont Open Source Program Office (VERSO). ORCA’s goals are to produce impactful, accessible, open source research tools by training tomorrow’s workforce in marketable open source skills.

The Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA) is a program that connects undergraduate students with faculty, graduate students, and community organizations to work on open source projects with social impact. ORCA Pods, consisting of 4-5 students, collaborate on research projects and develop open source solutions to address community needs. The program provides students with valuable experiential learning opportunities and supports faculty and community organizations in translating their research into practical applications.

The Handbook and How We Work

The best place to start is the ORCA Handbook! This contains an ORCA overview, Employment Policies, UVM Policies, Communication and Marketing, Health and Safety Policies and Resources. How ORCA Works describes how we have approached the ORCA program’s educational importance and impact.

Recruiting and Onboarding

We have tried to lay out some of the materials for hiring students including the job descriptions in Recruiting and we hope to expand this with much more information about how we find and bring new students into ORCA. We also have built onboarding processes but these are still evolving:

Projects

Project selection, onboarding and other resources for those interested in running a project are in the Projects document.

Policies and Plans

There are several stand alone policies that are uniquely applicable to the ORCA Program. These include:

These policies apply to anyone working on an ORCA project, be it paid, for class credit or as a student club volunteer.

Roles

There are multiple leadership roles for students in ORCA:

Team Lead – Leads a specific ORCA Pod, provides support for pod members and direction for the project
Team Member – Responsible for project execution including working collaboratively with researchers, and the development of open source software using standard engineering methodology.
Business Lead – Focused on growth of engagement with activities and marketing initiatives
Program Lead – Supports the efficiency and reliability of the ORCA pods, volunteers and the digital infrastructure that supports open activities
Community Lead – Supports the open source community with VERSO and affiliated programs
Mentor – Supports the growth of the leads and teams to help them meet their goals

Engineering Methodology

The team utilizes an Agile-inspired methodology emphasizing adaptability, collaboration, iterative development and a user-centered design approach. The following meetings will be held during each sprint:

Sprint Planning: At the beginning of each two-week cycle (sprint), the team members collectively select the tasks they will tackle during that period. They allocate tasks based on individual strengths and project needs.
Stand-ups: The team gathers for a brief stand-up meeting. Each member shares their progress from the previous standup and any obstacles they’re facing.
Sprint Review: At the end of each sprint, the team holds a review session to showcase the completed work, this is recorded and shared with project sponsors.

Collaboration and Communication Tools

To facilitate remote collaboration and streamlined communication, the team uses a variety of tools:

Project Management Software: They utilize project management tools in Github to track tasks, set priorities, and monitor progress.
Version Control and Collaboration Platform: They use platforms like GitHub for version control.
Video Conferencing: Microsoft Teams are used for virtual meetings, discussions, and brainstorming sessions.
Communication Channels: The team maintains communication channels through Slack for quick updates, questions, and sharing resources.
Documentation: Detailed documentation for each project, including technical specifications, coding standards, and user guides, is maintained throughout the development process.
Knowledge Transfer: When new team members join or as existing ones take on different roles, there’s an organized knowledge transfer process to bring everyone up to speed on ongoing projects. Additionally an Open Source Resource Library (GitHub Repo) where students can build out useful documentation to support the team.
ORCA Rules and Structure: The overall operations of the ORCA program are created with students as collaborators, designed to change to fit the program as needed. The GitHub Page: https://verso-uvm.github.io/ORCA/

Projects

Vermont Zoning Atlas (VTZA)

https://github.com/VERSO-UVM/VT_Zoning_Atlas

The Vermont Zoning Atlas (VTZA) Pod will creates a state-wide Zoning Atlas (following the standards of the National Zoning Atlas) that will encompass all of Vermont’s 237 towns, 10 cities, 5 unincorporated areas, and 4 gores in collaboration with the 11 regional planning commissions of VAPDA and various State of Vermont Agencies. The Pod will be working on building out the data for towns, validating data and building programming tools to assist in the work of maintaining the Zoning Atlas.

The Vermont Zoning Atlas is a web-based geospatial interface that visualizes zoning code distributions across all of Vermont. Zoning rules can present barriers to effective city planning, impairing our ability to achieve important policy objectives like community desegregation, climate change resiliency, transportation access, homelessness relief, and affordable housing development. The Vermont Zoning Atlas seeks to democratize researchers’, policymakers’, advocates’, and everyday citizens’ understanding of zoning regulations and enable apples-to-apples cross-jurisdiction comparisons through a methodology developed by our partner, the National Zoning Atlas. Without this tool, one would have to read thousands of pages of dense legal code to answer simple questions – this is why we believe our tool will democratize zoning policy and make it possible for advocates and researchers to identify barriers to things like affordable housing development, climate resiliency, and community desegregation more quickly.

UVM Research Partner: Yoshi Bird

News: Housing Forward Virginia – Zoning Atlases Across the Map: Vermont, August 24, 2023

Wastewater Infrastructure Mapping (WIM)

https://github.com/VERSO-UVM/Wastewater-Infrastructure-Mapping

The Wastewater Infrastructure Mapping project, led by the ORCA Pod in collaboration with the Windham Regional Commission, aims to address Vermont’s village centers’ lack of public water and sewer systems by building a comprehensive town-level dataset of wastewater resources. This effort is essential for supporting housing development, economic sustainability, and future community growth in alignment with Vermont’s settlement patterns. Without public infrastructure, new development is hindered, leading to a housing crisis and jeopardizing business retention. By systematically mapping existing wastewater infrastructure data and filling gaps, the project will help identify ideal locations for new development and inform strategic public investments. Working with partners like VCGI and state agencies, UVM students will compile and publish this data, supporting both immediate development challenges and broader state goals for sustainable growth and resilience. This, in conjunction with the Vermont Zoning Atlas and the ANR GIS – Vermont Wastewater Infrastructure will help to determine the capacity and potential ideal locations for growing housing. These efforts will be in collaboration with the Town of Jericho’s efforts to pilot an outreach strategy to educate and empower stakeholders with essential information on funding pathways, resources, and planning considerations. These efforts aims not only to address immediate development challenges but also to align with broader state objectives outlined in the Vermont Climate Action Plan, Comprehensive Energy Plan, and Long-Range Transportation Plan, fostering a holistic approach to sustainable growth and resilience.

The project is in collaboration with the following:

Heard & Understood App (HUA)

https://github.com/VERSO-UVM/Heard-and-Understood-App

The Heard and Understood App provides a way to explore and classify silence and gaps in conversations. This is an Open Community Research Accelerator (ORCA) project in collaboration with the Vermont Conversation Lab and their GitHub organization Heard & Understood(tm). This supports the exploration and adoption of the CONSert (Connectional Silence Ensemble-BERT) algorithm which uses a combination of Random Forests, Convolutional Neural Networks, OpenAI Whisper Transcriptions and a BERT ML model to detect, locate and classify pauses. Pauses will be classified as either Non-Connectional, Emotional, or Invitational.

Pause Types:

Non-Connectional – a pause that does not provide connectional context for the rest of the conversation
Emotional – a pause which provides time for emotional reflection
Invitational – a pause that invites another speaker to interact with the conversation

The methods used in this package are based on the methods used in Matt et al. 2023.

Matt et al. 2023: Matt, Jeremy E et al. “An Acoustical and Lexical Machine-Learning Pipeline to Identify Connectional Silences.” Journal of palliative medicine, 10.1089/jpm.2023.0087. 13 Jul. 2023, doi:10.1089/jpm.2023.0087

Interactive Management App

(Fall 2023 – Spring 2024)

The Interactive Management App project will design and build an open source tool for conducting Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) research with participants. The Interactive Management App will produce a flow diagram that helps a group of people solve a collective problem. The app will take in a list of factors identified by research participants that affect a specific problem. It will then work with participants to figure out the relationships between factors (things that impact their ability to act). An algorithm will then determine which factors should be addressed first, second, and so on in order for the group to meet their goals. This tool will be used in Thriving in Open Source Communities in Africa.
Sponsor: John Meluso
Project GitHub: https://github.com/VERSO-UVM/interactive-management-app

Repo: https://github.com/VERSO-UVM/interactive-management-app

Tasks: https://github.com/orgs/VERSO-UVM/projects/1/views/1

UVM Research Partner: John Meluso

This tool will be used in Thriving in Open Source Communities in Africa.

The Team

Alyssa Maguire

I am Alyssa - I'll be leading our ORCA pod for this fall. I have experience as a software engineer in the insurance industry - at Nationwide Mutual Insurance - and as a TA for several undergraduate CS courses at UVM. I feel FOSS is the best way I can nurture the world around me for the better, and I am eager to use my skillset to activate positive change with ORCA. Outside campus I climb at Metrorock, scuba dive with the Waterfront Dive Center and relax at Oakledge Park. I am excited to contribute to something meaningful and lasting!
My GitHub