I've been using it for all my programming units for a number of years. Whilst I don't use all of the features the main bonus for me is making the students commit code regularly and see the progress (or not!).
It also has a number of advantages, I have lost count of the number of times I have been sent screen shots of error messages (even camera photos of a screen). I now insist that all errors a reported via issues.
This means I can fix / push code for problems and track what I have done.
It also helps with plagarism as I can usually see the progress of students work with regular commits rather than one project that appears straight away via normal submission processes.
For group work there are a number of tools to do analytics on who did what etc so it make seeing how well the group has worked.
Now we are moving to online, I'm thinking of adding some of the CI / IDE features that are being introduced to help with Lab exercises, however in our area (Animation and Games) this is not ideal as a lot of what we do is visual / interactive.
> I have lost count of the number of times I have been sent screen shots of error messages (even camera photos of a screen). I now insist that all errors a reported via issues.
Hey, from someone who works on supporting developers every day, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I shake my head whenever an engineer, _an engineer_, feels like sending over a screenshot of an error that includes uuids that are 30+ characters is a reasonable way to report an issue.
I've used this https://gource.io/ for a good overview of group work then the build in analytics. Most of what I do is to download and run the code on my local machine, but I also ask for unit tests which help with the grading. All code is mainly C++ / OpenGL with python sometimes.
What about the privacy implications for your students? Do you have a way you handle that? Aren't you giving microsoft tons of your students' info ( including grades ) without the students' permission or even awareness?
No grades are on there and all the repos are private by default, yes MS get the info of the code (I've been using it since before the take over of GitHub). I think the students having public GitHub repos are good for CV / Job prospects anyway.
It also has a number of advantages, I have lost count of the number of times I have been sent screen shots of error messages (even camera photos of a screen). I now insist that all errors a reported via issues.
This means I can fix / push code for problems and track what I have done.
It also helps with plagarism as I can usually see the progress of students work with regular commits rather than one project that appears straight away via normal submission processes.
For group work there are a number of tools to do analytics on who did what etc so it make seeing how well the group has worked.
Now we are moving to online, I'm thinking of adding some of the CI / IDE features that are being introduced to help with Lab exercises, however in our area (Animation and Games) this is not ideal as a lot of what we do is visual / interactive.