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As a teacher of non-CS courses, it's nearly drool-worthy as an alternative to Blackboard but the private Repo's are not free and this is a deal breaker.
by reptation 11y ago
As a teacher of non-CS courses, it's nearly drool-worthy as an alternative to Blackboard but the private Repo's are not free and this is a deal breaker.
- tarebyte 11y agoGitHub Education provides free private repositories for educators. You can check it out here: https://education.github.com/discount_requests/new https://education.github.com/discount_requests/new
- bachmeier 11y agoAs I recall, that's only for use in the classroom, to get students hooked. If you're doing research, or anything other than teaching a class, you pay for private repos. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Bitbucket gives you a free unlimited account if you sign up with a .edu email address. [Edit: You actually get five free repos. Still limited and not at all the deal you get with Bitbucket.]
- capnrefsmmat 11y agoNo, GitHub gives you 5 free private repositories for any educational use if you sign up with an academic email. I use mine for research.
- johndbritton 11y agoResearchers are eligible too.
- Navarr 11y agoI don't think this does anywhere near half the things Blackboard does. Google Classroom is a much more powerful alternative to that.
- edgyswingset 11y agoBlackboard is an actual piece of shit, though. It's slow, still has trouble with most browsers, and doesn't get any of its features right. The four years of crap I had to put up with for that site are still fresh in my mind. To be a bit more solution-oriented, most students and teachers don't care about the majority of what BB offers. They want: * Upload and administer documents * Assign grades to assignments * Access Control to the above * Speed across all browsers for the above If Github can get these right, I don't see why they couldn't have a strong offering.
- ascagnel_ 11y agoBlackboard is the perfect example of buying by checkboxes: it ticks the most boxes, but since the person who buys the software rarely has to use it (if it all), they don't care that it does all those things terribly.
- dublinben 11y agoIt would be nice if respecting student privacy was one of the main requirements of a system like this.
- jessaustin 11y agoSerious question: what aspects of student privacy can't be covered by "Access Control" mentioned above?
- edgyswingset 11y agoI could see a company doing something shady like collecting metrics on students across different types of classes to eventually sell to someone. I can't for the life of me understand why that kind of data would be valuable, but I'm sure someone could make use of student metrics for advertising purposes.
- jessaustin 11y ago
- sytse 11y agoOur GitLab.com has free private repo's. Many universities use GitLab Community Edition so that students don't have to use a third party server.