Screengrab from The Chronicle of Higher Education.
I'M THINKING ABOUT Using Github Repositories in the academic year ahead. And I wonder if the process has some #icollab potential by connecting educators in four other countries.
Repositories
For me, the process starts at the end (at the point of major assessment) and that means setting up assignment repositories. That means creating a few repositories for different academic modules and seeding them with boilerplate content. My first seeds are README.txt items containing Evernote, Google Drive, Flickr and Dropbox credentials. My most advanced students will get starter source code for a Drupal site.
Project pages
My Github project pages incorporate background materials, documentation, short texts, photo captions and 30-second scripts related to major deliverables. These taskings involve:
- Committing Markdown files directly to the repository.
- Editing the repository wiki
- Creating a group project page using Drupal.
Automated testing
Automated testing is part of continuous assessment in my academic modules. I use this mechanism to assess whether students have completed deep dives into essential textbooks and to ensure they are listening to professionally produced audio material. I write these unit tests using a suite of different tools and administer some of thes tests through Socrative while in classroom settings.