education

GitHub Education is excited to announce the launch of our redesigned experience for Learners! Our goal was to enhance the GitHub Education experience, with a focus on learning new skills, finding opportunities, and helping Learners connect and build their network.

The redesign promotes user-friendliness, accessibility, and intuitive navigation, to provide Learners with the ability to find the resources they need to pursue a career in tech.

You can explore the new design at https://education.github.com/ and share your feedback with us on the GitHub Community Discussions.

Not a GitHub Education Learner yet? Join now at https://education.github.com/discount_requests/application.

Last month, we announced our plan to migrate from a strategy where student repositories are created from a template starter code repository to a strategy where student repositories are forked from the starter code repository.

Today, we are launching these changes as a Public Beta that you can opt-into on a per-classroom basis. You may opt-in your Classrooms by clicking the “Opt-in this classroom” button on the banner displayed at the top of the Dashboard of the Classroom you wish to opt-in.

We anticipate generally rolling out these changes to all Classrooms on June 17, 2024.

This public beta allows us to enable one of our most-requested features from teachers: the ability to change starter code after an assignment has been accepted by students. Students will be able to sync their assignment repository with the upstream starter code, allowing teachers to correct starter code mistakes or add additional content after the assignment has gone live to students.

Because there are important differences between creating a repository from a template and forking a repository, there are important changes in behavior for both new and existing assignments in GitHub Classroom. We recommend reviewing the following new behaviors and making adjustments to your assignments if necessary.

Important Changes for Classrooms in the Public Beta

• All new accepted assignments will be forks, including existing assignments that were created with a template repository. Existing assignment repositories will not be changed, so they will not be able to sync changes from upstream.
• Starter code assignments cannot be empty. If you are using a starter code repository without any commits, students will not be able to accept your assignment. GitHub Classroom will enforce this requirement for new assignments, but you will need to manually create an initial commit to existing empty starter code repositories in order for students to accept assignments.
• Starter code commits will no longer be automatically squashed in student repos. A new fork includes the entire commit history of the parent repository, while a repository created from a template starts with a single commit. This can affect teachers who may have assignment solutions in the commit history of the starter code. We recommend using Git on the command line or GitHub Desktop to squash commits of starter code repositories prior to distributing assignments to students if you previously had solutions filled-in the starter code.
• In order to enable private assignments, your organization must allow forking private repositories. Forking private repositories is not enabled for organizations by default. See managing the forking policy for your organization for information on how to enable this. During the Public Beta, our team is exploring options for automating this step.
• Student repository visibility will be inherited from the starter code repository. Forks of public repositories cannot be made private on GitHub. As a result, if you wish to use a public template repository as starter code for an assignment where student repositories should remain private, we recommend creating a new repository from the public template and setting it to private prior to using it as starter code in a GitHub Classroom assignment. During the Public Beta, our team is exploring options to automate this step.
• Private repositories must be in the same organization as the Classroom in order to be used as starter code. If you wish to use a private repository as starter code for an assignment that is housed under your user account or in another organization, we recommend configuring it to be a template repository and creating a new private repository from the template in the same organization as the Classroom prior to using it as starter code in a GitHub Classroom assignment. During the Public Beta, our team is exploring options to automate this extra step.

In January, GitHub Classroom will begin a public beta that will change the way student repositories are created from starter code repositories. Currently, starter code repositories must be template repositories, and GitHub Classroom creates a repository from a template for each student repository. After the change, student repositories will be created by forking the starter code repository.

This change allows us to enable one of our most-requested features from teachers: the ability to change starter code after an assignment has been accepted by students. Students will be able to sync their assignment repository with the upstream starter code, allowing teachers to correct starter code mistakes or add additional content after the assignment has gone live to students.

Because there are important differences between creating a repository from a template and forking a repository, there will be important changes in behavior for both new and existing assignments in GitHub Classroom. We recommend reviewing the following new behaviors and making adjustments to your assignments if necessary.

Important Changes starting in January

• All new accepted assignments will be forks, including existing assignments that were created with a template repository. Existing assignment repositories will not be changed, so they will not be able to sync changes from upstream.
• Starter code assignments cannot be empty. If you are using a starter code repository without any commits, students will not be able to accept your assignment. GitHub Classroom will enforce this requirement for new assignments, but you will need to manually create an initial commit to existing empty starter code repositories in order for students to accept assignments.
• Starter code commits will no longer be automatically squashed in student repos. A new fork includes the entire commit history of the parent repository, while a repository created from a template starts with a single commit. This can affect teachers who may have assignment solutions in the commit history of the starter code. We recommend using Git on the command line or GitHub Desktop to squash commits of starter code repositories prior to distributing assignments to students if you previously had solutions filled-in the starter code.
• Student repository visibility will be inherited from the starter code repository. Forks of public repositories cannot be made private on GitHub. As a result, if you wish to use a public template repository as starter code for an assignment where student repositories should remain private, we recommend creating a new repository from the public template and setting it to private prior to using it as starter code in a GitHub Classroom assignment.

Be on the lookout for another Changelog post when the public beta begins. Join the conversation in our Education community discussions for further clarifications.

Introducing Learning Paths on Global Campus, your first steps to building the skills to make the most out of your time using GitHub.
Starting today students will have access to two Learning Paths on Global Campus, "Getting Started with GitHub" and "GitHub Deep Dive". The path recommended to you is based on your GitHub activity, and can be found at the top of Global Campus in the onboarding module. These Learning Paths contain Experiences that will teach you how to leverage the many tools available on GitHub.

Educators using GitHub Classroom can now optionally set a assignment deadline to be a "hard cutoff." If you use a cutoff date, students will lose write access to their assignment repositories after the cutoff date has passed.

You can grant individual students and groups extensions to allow them more time to submit an assignment.

The assignment dashboard view is now updated to better indicate whether a student has committed to their repository on-time (before the deadline), late (after the deadline), or both. You can easily filter the dashboard view on these states, and quickly click through to the latest on-time and late commits of a student's repository.

Addressing a big ask from students, they can now click a button in their assignment README to view the deadline of the assignment at any time.

Read more about creating a new assignment, extending a deadline, and students' ability to view their assignment's deadline.

We're thrilled to introduce the GitHub Classroom CLI extension for the GitHub CLI, designed to simplify the lives of teachers everywhere. With this powerful new tooling, teachers can create their own personalized workflows, as well as streamline any custom solutions they've already built.

To get started, ensure you have the GitHub CLI installed, then install the extension with the following command:
gh extension install github/gh-classroom

Command your Classroom

The GitHub Classroom CLI extension provides a suite of commands to help you navigate your classrooms and assignments with ease. Here's a quick overview of its capabilities:

• gh classroom list: List all your unarchived classrooms
• gh classroom view: Show the details of a classroom, such as its name, description, URL, and roster
• gh classroom assignments: Display a list of assignments for a classroom
• gh classroom assignment: Show the details of an assignment, such as its title, type, deadline, starter code URL, and number of submissions
• gh classroom accepted-assignments: List your students' accepted assignments
• gh classroom clone starter-repo: Clone the starter code for an assignment
• gh classroom clone student-repos: Clone all your students' submissions for an assignment (a scriptable alternative to the Classroom Assistant desktop application)

To target a specific classroom, use the -c flag with each subcommand (retrieve a classroom's ID through selecting it in gh classroom ls or gh classroom view). In the absence of the -c flag, an interactive picker navigable with arrow keys will help you select the target classroom.

This collections of subcommands marks the beginning of our journey to deliver power features that save you time and enhance your workflows.

You can report issues or request features on our public repository, where we look forward to open sourcing the code in the coming weeks.

Share what you build with the GitHub Classroom CLI in our Global Campus for Teachers Discussions forum!

We are excited to announce the launch of GitHub Octernships! Students represent the next generation of developers and GitHub Education is here to nurture this talent, equip them with the skills they need to drive future software innovation.

GitHub Octernships is initially starting for students in 10 countries, including India, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, Mexico, Nigeria, and Colombia, and will gradually expand to more regions over time.

To apply, you need to be verified on Global Campus, be an active contributor on GitHub, and keep an eye out for new projects that we’ll be posting on Octernships all year round.

Checkout the blog to learn more. These changes will be gradually rolling out over the next few days. Have any questions or feedback, connect with us @ Octernships Discussion

Not yet verified? What are you waiting for? Join GitHub Global Campus.

Student community leaders can now apply to GitHub Campus Experts on GitHub Global Campus .

As a result of these changes, we updated the URLs. The form hosted on https://apply.githubcampus.expert/ will no longer be available in favor of https://education.github.com/campus_experts.

To learn more, read our documentation on how to apply to the GitHub Campus Experts program.

GitHub verified teachers using GitHub Classroom get access to GitHub’s groundbreaking, browser-based IDE, Codespaces. Teachers can enable Codespaces in GitHub Classroom and then choose it as the preferred editor when creating assignments.

We heard your feedback and from today, students can directly launch existing or new Codespaces from the Open in Codespaces button in readme.

For more information check out our documentation. Your feedback is welcome at our Education Community Forum.

Teachers we have heard your feedback! The GitHub Classroom team is excited to announce the ability to easily reuse an Assignment across Classrooms and/or from semester-to-semester. You dont have to now manually and repeatedly create new assignments using the same template repo.
Using 'Reuse assignment' you can copy an assignment and associated template repo across Classrooms and organizations. The copied assignment will include the Assignment details such as name, source repository, autograding and preferred editor.

These changes will be gradually rolling out over the next week. For more information on how to use this new experience, check out our documentation. Your feedback is welcome at our Education Community Forum.

The GitHub Classroom team is excited to announce our new experience for viewing information about your assignments! These changes will be gradually rolling out over the next week. The revamped view adds a higher-level summary of your students' progress with their assignment as well as refreshes the overall UI.

For more information on how to use this new experience, check out our Documentation. Your feedback is welcome at our Education Community Forum.

The GitHub Classroom team is excited to announce that our Git and GitHub Starter Course is out of Beta. Your experience using the Starter Course will not change, but the content has been stabilized and Beta tags removed.

For information on using the Starter Course, see our Documantation. Your feedback is welcome at our Education Community Forum.

You can now download a CSV while will include each students' GitHub alias, roster identifier, individual grade, and more for any given Assignment. No action is needed by you to use this feature.

On the Assignment overview page, you will now see a dropdown with an option to "Download grades." This is also the new home for the "Download repositories" functionality.

For feedback or questions on this feature, please use our GitHub Education Community Forum