I used this last year, they gave me an org and private repos for the student projects without any fuzz, it was really cool to teach a course with that and we open sourced the projects afterwards (it's in spanish, though) : <a href="https://github.com/progra4" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/progra4</a><p>I'll definitely use it again, the students learned a lot about project management and distributed version control systems, which is something that isn't being taught as it should, at least not where I went to college.
I would love to hear that there are CS/EE programs using version control to catch cheating. It seems to me that if you forced students to "show their work" by having them commit to their project repo in small increments, it would obviate (some of) the hoops some depts seem to go through to prevent cheating.<p>At my school, we were given programming problems a week in advance, told to solve them and memorize the solutions, and then had to show up at a computer lab for an "exam" where we basically typed the programs in and made sure they compiled, etc. I believe this process was put in place after rampant cheating was happening in more traditional "turn in your source code" types of projects. However, this was a pretty horrid experience, and for some students who treated them like regular exams (ie didn't actually memorize working solutions beforehand) these exams were crushing to their grades.<p>I can imagine some sort of automated checker for this, examining repos for unusual activity (one giant commit right at due date) after a project was submitted. Of course, I've also heard that in some academic CS depts, any version control at all is a huge deal (we were taught how to use the integrated CVS tools in Eclipse in one afternoon by some TAs, and that was the extent of my exposure to vc in the classroom, and this was in 2006-7), so maybe I'm dreaming too much.
They've been doing this less formally for a while. Last semester I sent them an email and within a day or so had a free private repository for a school project. It's both a great service and a smart financial move; the type of person who is likely to request a free student repository is extremely likely to do paid business with them in the future (i.e. after graduation).
This is why I love github,<p>I didn't realize that they have a student plan and I have applied with hope of getting this free micro plan.<p>In the past about 2 months, I have started using GIT and its simply brilliant for all types of version control whether development with other programmers or development on my own.
I just sent something to them regarding this as a student. I planned on using github this semester but I'm worried about having my code copied. I'm assuming they provide private repos for students? I'm not sure how successful I'd be getting professors to use github if they already have their own process. But I'd like my code in source control even if I end up submitting the final product some other way.