Putting the magic in the machine since 1980.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Teaching Web Applications: github and youtube

I am having my students use git and github for turning in their weekly project homeworks in my Web applications class this semester. The folks at github gave me 20 free private repos in our CSCE242 group which I am giving to the students, one each, so they can push their code without being able to see other students' code. The main goal is to get them familiarized, and maybe enthused, with git. A secondary goal is to make my grading easier. I hope to use github's commit commenting facilities to comment on specific lines of code in their code. Also, I'm setting up a cron job to git pull all the project locally right after the deadline, so then I can just open them up and run them, then maybe make some minor changes and push them upstream for the students to use.

I am also trying to flip the class, as I did in 145, by making youtube screencasts and assigning readings and then dedicating class time to one-on-one help with their ongoing project.

One interesting note is that the number of views on my Java tutorial videos did not go down after the semester was over but instead has stayed roughly the same over the Summer, as shown below. Perhaps this is a reflection of the current larger trend of 'everyone should learn to code'.