Abstract:

Jupyter Notebook is an open-source web-based interactive coding environment that supports many popular languages such as Python, C/C++, Bash, etc. A notebook containing code, plain language descriptions, images, and videos can be created and shared for interactive, hands-on learning. However, setting up an environment to run notebooks and related tools and libraries on various computing platforms such as MacOS, Chromebook, and Windows can be challenging. GitHub Codespaces, a cloud-based development platform, addresses these challenges by offering a preconfigured, zero-setup environment, ensuring seamless access to modern coding tools and libraries with a popular Visual Studio Code (VS Code) Graphical User Interface (GUI) editor and fully configurable Linux Terminal. This paper explores how the integration of Jupyter Notebook with GitHub Codespaces enhances interactive learning in computer science education, providing students and educators with a free, flexible, scalable, and platform-independent solution. We share some best practices learned from using these tools for several years in many undergraduate computer science courses at a regional university in Colorado, USA.

Keywords:

Jupyter Notebook, Codespaces, Computer Science education, interactive coding.