Instructor’s Guide to GitHub Classroom

Version control is a foundational skill in modern software development, and Git remains the most influential tool in this space. This post provides a brief history of Git, an overview of the ecosystem of platforms built around it, and a short, instructor-focused guide to using GitHub Classroom for managing programming assignments.

From the Linux Kernel to Git

Git’s origins trace back to the early development of the Linux kernel, which started as a personal project by Linus Torvalds in the early 1990s. As the kernel community expanded, the need for an efficient, distributed version control system became increasingly urgent. Earlier tools were centralized, slow, or proprietary, none suited the rapid development the project required.

Git Branches : credits to deepAI

By 2005, after the Linux community lost access to BitKeeper (their then-primary tool), Torvalds created Git. It was designed in days but engineered with long-term principles that still define it today. It can easily,

• Handle massive, fast-moving projects like the Linux kernel.
• Use a distributed model so every developer has the full history.
• Ensure integrity using cryptographic hashing (SHA-1).
• Make branching and merging extremely fast, encouraging experimentation.

Git’s design made it not just a replacement for existing tools but a revolutionary new approach to version control.

Evolving Into an Ecosystem

While Git itself is purely a command-line tool, hosting platforms transformed it into a global collaboration system. These platforms add issue trackers, pull requests, continuous integration, and social features, turning code repositories into complete development hubs. GitHub, launched in 2008, popularized “social coding” by introducing pull requests for structured code review, issues and project boards for lightweight project management, and community-driven features like forks and stars, along with integrated services such as GitHub Pages and Actions, helping it become the dominant open-source platform. GitLab took a more open and automation-focused approach, offering a fully open-source, self-hostable Git server with built-in CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps tooling designed for full lifecycle control. Bitbucket differentiated itself through early support for free private repositories and deep integration with Atlassian tools like Jira, Confluence, and Trello, while also providing both cloud and on-premise hosting. Together, these platforms illustrate how Git’s flexible design enabled a diverse and extensible ecosystem of collaboration tools.

GitHub Classroom

My main objective with this post is to introduce the GitHub Classroom. This extends GitHub for educational use, making it easier for instructors to distribute, manage, and grade programming assignments. Instead of manually creating repositories for each student, Classroom automates the entire workflow. Specially it has lot of very good features like,

• Exposes students to industrial workflows, preparing them for internships and industry work.
• Automatically generates private student repositories with one link.
• Supports starter code, allowing uniform project scaffolds.
• Autograding, using tests instructors provide.
• Simplifies feedback, since instructors can comment directly in PRs.

It brings professional tooling into the classroom with minimal overhead.

Setting Up a GitHub Classroom

Before getting started, you’ll need an active GitHub account. If you register using your university email address, you may be eligible for a free GitHub Pro or GitHub Education account, which provides additional features useful for teaching.

• Teachers – GitHub Education
• GitHub Student Developer Pack

The steps below provide a high-level overview of how to set up GitHub Classroom effectively. This isn’t an exhaustive guide, but it covers the essential actions required to create and manage a functional course environment.

Create or Choose a GitHub Organization

A GitHub Organization acts as a container for all student repositories. Keeping course repositories organized in an organization avoids clutter in your personal GitHub account.

Steps to create an organization:

1. Visit github.com/organizations
2. Select a proper name for your class room
3. Choose the free plan (GitHub upgrades education orgs automatically)
4. Add co-instructors as owners or members

This enables GitHub Classroom to automatically create student repos inside the organization .

Create a Classroom

The classroom provides a dashboard where assignments, student progress, and settings live.

To create a classroom:

1. Go to classroom.github.com
2. Click New Classroom
3. Select your organization
4. Name your classroom (e.g., CPEN4700 – Fall 2025)

This will create a classroom dash board where you can add a class rooster. You can easily download the class rooster an CSV file and add it to your classroom.

Create an Assignment

Assignments are the core of GitHub Classroom. They can be configured as individual or group-based tasks and may include starter code, test suites, or autograding setups. Before you create an assignment, you’ll first need a template repository, this is the code scaffold that Classroom will copy into each student’s private repository.

In my classes, I typically provide a small sample project (such as a simple calculator) that students can complete in 5-10 minutes. This helps them get comfortable with the environment, the workflow, and the submission process.

If you’re interested, you’re welcome to use my sample project template repository to test your own assignment setup.

Steps to create an assignment:

1. In your classroom, click New Assignment.
2. Choose either an Individual or Group assignment.
3. Select the template repository for your starter code, such as
   “ArchitectLab/calculator”, or create your own.
4. Configure the assignment settings, including:
   • Deadlines
   • Autograding tests
   • Visibility
5. Generate the student invitation link.

You can share this invitation link through Canvas announcements or within your project description. When students click the link for the first time, they will be prompted to select their name from the roster, which links their Canvas identity to their GitHub account. After this step, GitHub Classroom automatically creates a private repository for each student (or team). From the Classroom dashboard, you can easily monitor all student repositories and track their submissions in one place.

GitHub Classroom includes lightweight tools to help instructors keep track of submissions and performance.

Monitoring features include:

• A list showing who has accepted the assignment
• Quick links to each student’s repository
• Autograding results (when enabled)
• Ability to leave inline comments or review pull requests

This makes it easy to scale beyond small classes while maintaining feedback quality.

Complex AutoGrading Scripts

By default, the autograding feature in GitHub Classroom allows you to test student submissions using predefined test cases and assign grades automatically. However, for more complex assignments, you can create custom workflows using GitHub Actions. These workflows let you automate the execution environment (including containerized setups) and evaluate student submissions with custom scripts.

For example, the following GitHub Actions workflow is used in my sample project to check the output produced by students’ programs:

name: Autograding Tests

on:
  push:
  repository_dispatch:

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  run-autograding-tests:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.actor != 'github-classroom[bot]'
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Prep
        run: |
          rm -f output.txt
          chmod +x run.sh

      - name: Run student script
        id: runscript
        shell: bash
        run: ./run.sh

      - name: Check output with diff
        id: check-diff
        run: |
          echo "Comparing output.txt with expected_output.txt..."
          if diff -wB output.txt expected_output.txt; then
            echo "Output matches expected (0)"
          else
            echo "Output does not match (X)"
            exit 1
          fi

      - name: Upload output artifact if output does not match
        if: failure()   
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: student-output
          path: |
            output.txt
            expected_output.txt
          retention-days: 7

This workflow can be easily extended to support more complex grading scenarios. Instead of running on the default ubuntu-latest runner, the job can be configured to execute inside a custom Docker container by specifying a container image, ensuring a consistent runtime environment across all submissions. The testing logic can also be customized by replacing run.sh with language-specific scripts, test frameworks (such as JUnit, pytest, or custom bash scripts), or multiple test stages. Additional steps can be added to install dependencies, run static analysis, or evaluate performance constraints. Together, these modifications allow instructors to tailor the autograding process to match real-world development environments and more advanced assignment requirements.

Final Thoughts

Git was originally created to meet the fast-paced demands of early Linux kernel development, but it has since grown into a universal tool that underpins nearly all modern software engineering workflows. Platforms like GitHub expanded Git into a collaborative ecosystem, and GitHub Classroom builds on that foundation to support teaching and learning.

In summary, GitHub Classroom provides:

• Professional-grade tools for students and exposure to CICD workflows
• Automated workflows that significantly reduce overhead
• A scalable, organized system for managing assignments

Whether you’re teaching an introductory programming course or an upper-level computer engineering or computer science class, GitHub Classroom offers a simple yet powerful way to integrate real-world development practices into your curriculum. And based on student feedback, I can confidently say, they enjoy working with it just as much as we do.