Experiences and insights from using Github Classroom to support Project-Based Courses

TL;DR

This paper explores using GitHub Classroom to enhance project-based software engineering courses, highlighting stakeholder needs, benefits observed, and insights for improving education through metrics and tooling support.

Contribution

It introduces a structured approach for using GitHub Classroom in project-based courses and shares lessons learned and insights for future educational improvements.

Findings

Professors and students perceive benefits from the approach

Using metrics helps monitor skill development

Tooling support enhances project management and assessment

Abstract

This work presents an approach for using GitHub classroom as a shared, structured, and persistent repository to support project-based courses at the Software Engineering Undergraduate program at PUC Minas, in Brazil. We discuss the needs of the different stakeholders that guided the development of the approach. Results on the perceptions of professors and students show that the approach brings benefits. Besides the lessons learned, we present insights on improving the education of the next generation of software engineers by employing metrics to monitor skill development, verifying student work portfolios, and employing tooling support in project-based courses.