{"id":22492,"date":"2020-12-10T07:37:42","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T07:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/github-data-science-classroom-our-experience-lessons-learned\/"},"modified":"2023-09-28T05:43:36","modified_gmt":"2023-09-28T05:43:36","slug":"github-data-science-classroom-our-experience-lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/software-ux-ui\/github-data-science-classroom-our-experience-lessons-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"GitHub in the Data Science Classroom: Our Experience and Lessons Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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GitHub\u2019s use for managing assignments in a programming course has benefits for learners and instructors, but its use is not intuitive<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Image courtesy of Author<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Version control tools such as Git and GitHub are common tools of the trade for those working in industry software development and data science teams. While not particularly difficult to use, there is a learning curve to getting up to speed with them, particularly when used from the command line as is typical for professional software developers. Reaching a level of comfort with the system can be intimidating for junior developers entering their first industry roles who have not previously worked with it.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Despite its widespread use in industry, GitHub has only recently seen increasing use in academic class settings. A significant driver of the increasing adoption in universities is the education-specific functionality contained in\u00a0GitHub <a href=”https:\/\/classroom.github.com\/” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>Classroom<\/a>, which was released in 2015. GitHub Classroom enables instructors to manage the distribution and collection of student assignments via GitHub, rather than a university\u2019s traditional Learning Management Systems (LMS). Although GitHub does not offer the full functionality of a LMS, it does provide several advantages over one, most notably the opportunity for students to gain comfort in working with the tool prior to entering their first professional industry role. GitHub claims that as of August 2019 roughly 20,000 teachers were using GitHub Classroom to manage assignments.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In Duke University\u2019s\u00a0Master of Engineering in AI for Product Innovation<\/a>\u00a0program we began utilizing GitHub Classroom this fall in our graduate-level courses. Our first pilot with GitHub Classroom was in our Sourcing Data for Analytics course, a graduate-level course focused on sourcing, managing, cleaning and analyzing real-world data. Much of the course, and the majority of the homework assignments the students completed, was programming-intensive with Python being the primary language used. The programming assignments were in the form of Jupyter Notebooks, with skeleton code generally provided to students to get them started on each assignment.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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GitHub Classroom was used to distribute homework assignments to students, collect assignments automatically at each deadline, and then return grades and feedback back to students. An assignment is created by the instructor out of a Jupyter Notebook as a template repository in GitHub, and then can be distributed via the automated setup of private repositories for each student containing the skeleton code of the assignment and instructions. Students can then clone the assignment files to their computer, work on it, and push their updated versions back to their repository as they work.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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NBGrader<\/a>\u00a0was used for assignment grading, including a combination of autograding and manual grading. To facilitate the automated collection of students\u2019 work on each assignment, a helpful package called\u00a0abc-classroom<\/a>\u00a0was used. Abc-classroom, developed and maintained by University of Colorado\u2019s EarthLab, enables an instructor to automate the collection of student assignments from their GitHub repositories by cloning them to the instructor\u2019s computer, at which point nbgrader can be used to grade their work. Instructors then push the graded assignments back out to the students\u2019 repositories automatically via abc-classroom.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlthough the majority of our students had not previously used GitHub, they were able to pick it up quickly and we did not have a single incidence of a student failing to submit their assignment due to issues with navigating GitHub. The following article summarizes our experience using the combination of GitHub Classroom \/ abc-classroom \/ nbgrader for assignment management in our course. For instructors interested in getting started with these tools in their own class, we have developed a detailed\u00a0step-by-step guide\u00a0<\/a>to help faculty get up and running.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Benefits for students<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Image courtesy of Author<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Let\u2019s start with the benefits we have found for students from using GitHub Classroom in combination with the above-mentioned tools. The first and most significant benefit was that students were able to gain practice with using version control during their studies, significantly reducing the learning curve for Git \/ GitHub after graduation when they begin work on an industry team. In our end-of-semester student survey, 82% of students indicated that the use of GitHub in the course was \u201cvery valuable\u201d, and the remaining 18% indicated it was \u201csomewhat valuable\u201d. Not a single student felt that the use of GitHub in the course was \u201cnot valuable\u201d.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Additionally, the use of Git\/GitHub for version control enabled students to easily revert back to older versions of their saved work as needed. Although we did not require its use for the team-based course project, all student teams decided to use GitHub to manage their shared codebase and collaborative development. Finally, the use of GitHub to manage assignments ensured that each student left the course with not only a level of comfort in working with Git\/GitHub but also their own GitHub portfolio <\/a>of work which they could build on in the future.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Benefits for instructors<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The use of GitHub had benefits for the course instructors as well. The key benefits we observed over the semester, relative to the default option of using the university LMS for assignment management, were:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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