Abstract:

We have conducted an exploratory experiment in order to discover if the use of GitHub and its educational version GitHub Classroom, very well-known tools in the field of software development, is actually widespread among the students of the degree in Computer Science and the double degree in Computer Science & Mathematics at the University of La Rioja (Spain).

In addition, the scope of the study extends also to other areas which are not so close to technology. We have integrated the use of these tools into the teaching of Informatics in the Health Science field. It has allowed us to analyze whether these tools can be applied to different areas as a useful educational resource.

Furthermore, we have been able to verify whether these tools can be considered as enabling technologies for managing the teaching-learning process, since they allow tracking the participation of each student in each activity. We have analyzed all the information gathered during the experiment so as to identify the contribution of each student not only to individual tasks, but specifically to collective assignments, which are usually harder to evaluate, especially in conventional styles of teaching, in which interaction among students can go unnoticed by professors.

After the statistical processing of the collected data, we have been able to draw some interesting conclusions. We have verified that the so-called Herd Behavior ([1]) can also be found in the educational context. This effect can be identified whenever many people affirm that they are using a new technological tool, GitHub in this case, although they are not doing it properly, or they are simply not using it.

As a result of our analysis, we have created a proposal for recommendations that can be used as a guide by those professors who decide to use these tools as an educational resource.

References:
[1] Y. Yu, G. Yin, H. Wang, and T. Wang, “Exploring the patterns of social behavior in GitHub,” in Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Crowd-based Software Development Methods and Technologies, CrowdSoft 2014. pp. 31-36, 2014, doi: 10.1145/2666539.2666571.

Keywords:

GitHub, GitHub Classroom, educational resource.