What is GitHub Classroom?

GitHub Classroom uses the GitHub API to integrate a GitHub workflow into education. It allows instructors to efficiently manage and organize their courses in the form of git repositories, with GitHub serving as a visual front-end. Using the industry-standard workflow, students can show versions of their project, check in on milestones and present the final product. Instructors create an assignment with starter code and directions, send an invitation link to your students, which subsequently get their private copy of the assignment repository, and their commits can be evaluated automatically.

For whom is GitHub Classroom interesting?

Anyone who teaches a course involving computation, working with scripts (e.g., stats courses) or basic programming, can benefit from GitHub Classroom.

Why use GitHub Classroom?

For lecturers: GitHub Classroom manages and organizes your coding class, and simplifies porting an existing course structure over semesters and courses. More importantly, GitHub Classroom has flexible integrations to grade code-based assignments and exams. During this pushing changes/evaluation workflow, in-line feedback can be given by instructors, clearly pointing students to problems in their code. This avoids lengthy, often unclear discussions on online fora, and could support in-class discussion as well. Lastly, version control can be used to make you and your students aware of plagiarism issues.

For students: Odds are that almost anyone interested in a profession that has something to do with programming will be exposed to git or another system of version control one way or the other; GitHub is widely used in academia and industry. GitHub Classroom is therefore a great way to add GitHub to your students’ curriculum and help them gain some initial experience with GitHub.