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I think there's a certain understanding of process with any version control system that's kind of hard to teach without one. Collaboration by "sneaker-net" ofte

I think there's a certain understanding of process with any version control system that's kind of hard to teach without one. Collaboration by "sneaker-net" often results in one person doing all of the computer work, or hideous passing of flash drives or emailing of documents. It's very manual and while it can work, it's a chore and prone to errors. Working with version control, suddenly you're aware that other students in your group will see your changes via the logs (adding accountability), and if you have a good professor, you're also writing descriptive commit messages for anything you do. Over time, a student becomes cognizant of the why inherent in their work, in a way that might be hard to appreciate otherwise. It's not enough just to get the solution to work, you must also explain your approach to your classmates, and sometimes just the act of explaining your method enlightens you to a flaw in its approach. You must also become aware of their group members work, because every time you pull or merge, conflicts must be taken care of, bugs introduced must be solved, and some degree of collaboration is therefore forced. It's really a lovely tool, and it adds structure and teachable moments in ways that are hard to replicate otherwise.

bsder 8y ago
I love your optimism, but it wasn't anything that wonderful. It forces the students to be consistent. That's all. However, that's huge by itself. Very few of them understood the larger purpose of version control. Almost all of them simply viewed it as a robust, reliable homework submission system (too many professors had Blackboard(tm) things that sucked giant hairy donkey balls). And since I had automated tests running, they could get feedback instantly for almost a full two weeks as to whether they were passing or not. And that view as a submission system was sufficient. A couple students started figuring out merging. A couple tied themselves into knots or lost files and I had to help them out of the morass. That was fine, too. As for collaboration, I almost never allow group projects because I can't control the team dynamics of them like a real manager would control team dynamics. The only time I give a "group" assignment is when it is "the class" vs "me". One class wanted extra credit. "Fine. Here is the code I use to run automated tests against the code you all submit. Contribute some tests. Tests have to pass on correct code and fail on bad code. Whoever submits a correct test gets a point (limit 10) and the class overall gets 1/10 of a point." Not a single point given. And a couple students learned that validating that your code is correct is MUCH more difficult than simply writing the code to the specification that the professor gave you...

bsder 8y ago

I love your optimism, but it wasn't anything that wonderful. It forces the students to be consistent. That's all. However, that's huge by itself. Very few of them understood the larger purpose of version control. Almost all of them simply viewed it as a robust, reliable homework submission system (too many professors had Blackboard(tm) things that sucked giant hairy donkey balls). And since I had automated tests running, they could get feedback instantly for almost a full two weeks as to whether they were passing or not. And that view as a submission system was sufficient. A couple students started figuring out merging. A couple tied themselves into knots or lost files and I had to help them out of the morass. That was fine, too. As for collaboration, I almost never allow group projects because I can't control the team dynamics of them like a real manager would control team dynamics. The only time I give a "group" assignment is when it is "the class" vs "me". One class wanted extra credit. "Fine. Here is the code I use to run automated tests against the code you all submit. Contribute some tests. Tests have to pass on correct code and fail on bad code. Whoever submits a correct test gets a point (limit 10) and the class overall gets 1/10 of a point." Not a single point given. And a couple students learned that validating that your code is correct is MUCH more difficult than simply writing the code to the specification that the professor gave you...