version control

Prasanna Karthik Vairam

Department of Computer Science, School of Computing, NUS

prasanna@comp.nus.edu.sg

Vairam, P. K. (2024). Abolishing 11:59PM deadlines or: How students learned to stop worrying and love the assignments [Paper presentation]. In Higher Education Conference in Singapore (HECS) 2024, 3 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecs/hecs2024-pkvairam/

SUB-THEME

Opportunities from Wellbeing

KEYWORDS

Assignment deadlines, mental health, github classrooms, version control

EXTENDED ABSTRACT

University courses typically have many assignments, and the deadlines are predominantly set at a fixed time (e.g., 11:59 PM on Friday). While we know that students despise deadlines through anecdotal evidence, contemporary research also agrees (Capelle, 2023). Fixed deadlines result in anxiety, stress, and induce last-minute mishaps (e.g., accidental deletion). Inability to perform well in an assignment can result in frustration and shame, negatively affecting the student’s learning journey through the rest of the course. Some university teachers have experimented with suggested deadlines, wherein, students are allowed to submit late for a penalty. However, such solutions do little to alleviate the problems, considering that students often work last-minute and submit sub-par works (Castro, 2022). Therefore, there is a need for a solution that promotes student wellness without compromising on submission quality.

In this paper, we describe a continuous submission methodology that eliminates the need for a fixed Assignment deadline in a computer programming course, promoting student wellness without compromising learning outcomes.

We achieve this through a combination of i) Github Classroom, a cloud-based education technology platform from Microsoft, ii) code templates, a technique that we propose to transform assignments into fill-in puzzles, and iii) Conferring, a known pedagogical technique. Github classroom uses git to maintain versions of the files in the project. This means that students can incrementally save (or commit) their work to the platform. Every save is a submission. Next, to make the process of solving assignments interesting and learning outcome-focused, we provide code templates, which is a pre-written code given by the instructor, with blanks that the student is required to fill. Pre-written code is the boring piece of code that must be written for the program to run, while it does not contribute to the learning outcome. Last, the instructor confers with students to monitor their progress continuously. The saves (or commits) on Github classroom allows the instructor to identify individual students progress over time, providing an opportunity to intervene (and confer) if necessary. Conferring can be done either face-to-face or through Github Issues. Github Issues is a feature typically used to file software bugs, but they come in handy as a non-intrusive and less-intimidating way of reminding students that they are falling behind on the assignment.

The process of coding and submitting assignments could be as follows:

Day 0: Students accept the assignment through the Github classroom link created by the instructor.
Day 1: Download the code template (i.e., the starter code) from Github classroom.
Day 1: Fill in the missing piece of code. For instance, the code corresponding to Q1 of Assignment.
Day 3: After finishing Q1, perform a git commit (save and submit).
Day 5: Instructor looks at student progress across class and identifies those falling behind. Instructor files Github Issues for these students. This feedback can either be a gentle reminder or could be little hints to guide them in the correct direction.
Day 7: Student continues to code Q2 and performs git commit.
Eventually, the student finishes Q3 and Q4 of student, each with a different git commit.
The instructor does not need to check the deadline since each git commit comes with a timestamp.
No penalties are given as long as the commits are within an acceptable timeline.

The effectiveness of the method can be observed by looking at the commit (or save) distribution over time and the number of commits made by the students (not adding the graph due to pending IRB clearance).

CONCLUSION

The proposed method removes the anxiety that students typically associate with assignments, allowing them to focus on the learning outcomes instead. The method is both a continuous submission and continuous evaluation/monitoring system. Some of the other benefits include including the prevention of accidental deletion, since all data is stored in cloud every time the students execute the git commit. Although we demonstrate our method in the context of a programming course, it can be extended to courses in other domains.

REFERENCES

Capelle, J. D., Senker, K., Fries, S., & Grund, A. (2023). Deadlines make you productive, but what do they do to your motivation? Trajectories in quantity and quality of motivation and study activities among university students as exams approach. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1224533. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1224533

Castro, F. E. V., Leinonen, J., & Hellas, A. (2022), Experiences with and lessons learned on deadlines and submission behavior, Proceedings of the 22nd Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, https://doi.org/10.1145/3564721.3564728