[johnwfinigan]

I teach a college UNIX systems programming class. This semester I decided to switch to GitHub, and so far, I can't believe I didn't do it earlier.

I like to write code in class, and it's great to be able to push every couple of minutes so students can follow along on their laptops if they want. Of course that's more about git itself, but the GitHub interface is good and I think that it lowers the frictional cost for both me and the students, so everybody gets a little more done.

[alexeyza]

I used it to teach my class as well. But I have to be honest, it wasn't obvious at first how to use it - especially how would I manage the course website there (which needed to accommodate different semesters). Eventually, I figured out that I don't really need an HTML website, but using Markdown files would get the job done (and would be better, as it makes it easy for students to commit PR with corrections and suggestions to the course website and material). I really love our setup now, but it took some figuring out the best way to do it. BTW, if anyone is interested here the course website (just as our example):

http://startup-programming.com

[johnwfinigan]

I am definitely feeling that: I've already had to do some reorganizing as I discover that some of my initial decisions weren't perfect, as to organizing the class repo.

By the way, your article has encouraged me to get the students using issues for eg. homework questions they'd normally email, thanks for that.

[alexeyza]

That's great!! I'm happy it helped.

Can I ask what initial decisions you had, or what did you reorganize with time?

[johnwfinigan]

Sure. Basically, we go through the first half or so of Stevens' Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment fairly sequentially. My first take was to group the example code by topic, but I've realized that it might make more sense to group it by book chapter. So that's my current reorganization plan. The thought is, with lots of topics, it will help orient people better if they have an explicit cue for what chapter to review if they are confused.

That's pretty specific to the more or less sequential approach with the book, though. It's a good book, so it can support that kind of thing.

I think it will also help with presenting the supplemental material that is linked with each chapter/section. Again, that might be specific since in the Stevens book, there is always a manpage or Single UNIX Specification reference to give for almost any section.

[bitHero]

GitHub Pages might be a good solution for you course website, it does HTML templates and allows you to use markdown.

[alexeyza]

Yes, you're probably right. I didn't want it to include any HTML (to make it easy for anyone to contribute to course website), but perhaps there is a way to use a simple Markdown for GitHub pages.

[sanderjd]

I think jekyll[0] works really well in conjunction with github pages for exactly your use case.

[0]: https://jekyllrb.com/

[alexeyza]

Well, I use Octopress (similar to this) for my own blog. But, for the course, where I wanted all the students and other staff members to be involved, I wanted something much more simple. More specifically - nothing that would require building. Perhaps that could be just me and my preference.

This might be a good solution if people want something a bit more fancy as a course website. Thanks for sharing.