Two projects, different purposes
FreeCampus Community Courses
We believe everyone should have access to high-quality learning materials. The community creates open courses to support learners in their learning journey, freely available as static web pages with explanations, practice, quizzes, and learning tools.
Our ambition is to expand learning opportunities for millions of people worldwide, including across Latin America and Africa. By making high-quality materials developed and reviewed by experts freely accessible, we aim to help learners build skills, pursue new opportunities, and use what they learn to make a difference in their communities and the wider world.
Contributors work together to improve these public resources for their own educational value. The courses remain available independently of the App, without an App account, subscription, or commitment to use it.
FreeCampus App
The App is a separate commercial project in development. It is designed to help learners go beyond course materials through a richer learning experience, with guided practice, feedback, progress tracking, and projects. Its model includes a free tier and paid tiers; these describe the planned offering, not features already available.
The App team manages its development, organization, and income. App revenue supports the App's operation and development and is not a shared community revenue fund. The App team may also commission specific tasks through its own paid contracts, including course creation, updates, and translations.
Both projects support learning, but their responsibilities, resources, and ways of working differ. The community focuses on access to open materials; the App focuses on the learning services built around selected materials. Read more about both projects.
Community participation and the App
All activities within FreeCampus Community Courses are unpaid volunteer work in support of freely accessible education. Community participation does not provide compensation, royalties, a share of App revenue, or a promise that materials will be included in the App.
Community contributors help shape the open courses through proposals, discussion, and review. Participation does not grant authority over the App's roadmap, development, or organization; those decisions belong to the App team.
You are welcome to contribute to the community without taking part in the App. Your contribution has value as an open learning resource whether or not an App version is ever created. Where materials are reused, their licenses, ownership, and attribution requirements continue to apply.
Find your role
You can combine roles. Start small and discuss larger contributions with the maintainers before beginning.
Authors and course designers
Create lessons, examples, exercises, quizzes, or projects. For a new course, propose its audience, prerequisites, learning outcomes, and outline first. Follow the existing course format, include useful feedback, and check examples. Consider phone users and identify activities requiring a computer.
Use the Course Author Guide to organize journeys, courses, milestones, units, and lessons. It also explains ungraded practice and progress stored only in the learner's browser on the same device.
Authors and maintainers discuss scope, attribution, and maintenance as part of editorial and technical review. Explore the Instructor Network.
Translators
Translate lessons, exercises, quiz feedback, and supporting instructions. Agree on the language, locale, source version, and file structure first. Preserve attribution, keep code working, and have translations checked for language and subject accuracy.
Coordinate review and publication with course maintainers, including how future source changes will be tracked.
Reviewers and editors
Check accuracy, clarity, learning progression, assessments, or accessibility. Point to the specific lesson, explain the issue, and suggest an improvement. Test exercises and feedback, including incorrect answers.
Discuss improvements constructively with authors and maintainers. You can review a single lesson without taking responsibility for the entire course.
Learners and testers
Report confusing explanations, broken links, missing prerequisites, or exercises that fail. Share the lesson URL, what you expected, and what happened. Include your device when relevant and remove personal information from examples or screenshots.
Your feedback helps improve self-paced courses. Individual tutoring and fixed response times are not part of the community offering.
Developers and designers
Improve websites, notebooks, quizzes, build tools, documentation, or accessibility. Read repository instructions, explain the learner problem, and validate your changes. Favor mobile usability and efficient loading; discuss new services or data collection first.
Discuss technical choices and maintenance with the project maintainers. App development requires its own agreed scope and access.
Community helpers
Welcome newcomers, answer questions, facilitate study discussions, or propose activities. Help learners understand the reasoning and respect different backgrounds and available study time.
Agree on responsibilities for ongoing activities or moderation, including schedules and support commitments, before announcing them.
How to contribute
- Choose a project. Browse the subjects and GitHub repositories. Read the project's instructions, license, and open issues.
- Propose a focused change. Small fixes can go directly to a pull request. For larger work, open an issue with the audience, deliverable, sources, and your availability.
- Submit and review. Follow the course format, check your work, and explain what changed. Maintainers review submissions and may request revisions before publication.
- Agree on the handoff. Record attribution, remaining tasks, and any maintenance commitment. Let maintainers know if your availability changes.
For a new course or a general question, open an issue in the website repository. Learner feedback can be submitted as an issue without a pull request.
Working together
We aim to provide clear guidance, constructive review, and recognition through contributor records, acknowledgments, or course credits. Discuss your preferred public name and attribution when submitting work.
Publication depends on quality, suitability, licensing, and maintenance capacity. Review timing varies. Choose a contribution you can sustain; ongoing responsibilities should be agreed explicitly.
Licenses and credit
- Check each resource. Read the repository's LICENSE and any separate notices for images, datasets, code, or other assets. Free access alone does not grant reuse rights.
- Contribute material you can share. Identify sources and permission restrictions. Resolve third-party rights before submission; ask maintainers when terms are unclear.
- Preserve ownership and attribution. Contributing does not by itself transfer copyright. Retain required notices, credit contributors, and link to original sources when adapting materials.
- Check App reuse. An App course can adapt community material only when the license permits the intended use, including commercial adaptation, or additional permission is obtained. Public community materials remain open independently of the App.
The website, Python, and Mathematics repositories currently publish BSD 3-Clause license files. Follow their actual terms, including required notices and restrictions on implied endorsement, and check for separately licensed assets. This guide does not change those licenses or set the terms for all App materials and software.
Separate contracts with the App team
The App team may independently contract authors, translators, managers, and other supporters from the community for specific tasks. These may include creating or updating courses, translating materials, coordinating work, teaching, or mentoring, depending on the App's needs and budget.
These are paid contracts with the App project, separate from community volunteering. They do not turn community activities into paid work or create a right to payment for previous volunteer contributions. Community members are free to accept or decline an invitation; participation does not guarantee a contract.
Each App contract needs an agreement covering scope, compensation, schedule, rights, attribution, and maintenance. Teaching and mentoring also need agreed hours, time zones, and support expectations. You can discuss an opportunity without committing to unpaid preparation or accepting a contract.