[jandrese]

When I was in college we had a number of group projects and I thought the whole time that it would make a ton of sense for the professor to set up a class repo (I'm a old person so they would be a CVS repo at the time) and be able to see exactly what each person had contributed to the project. Even for single person projects it would have made it so much easier to detect cheaters. I also think it might light a fire under some of the less shameless slackers.

I hope schools do this now. Not only for detecting cheaters but to get the kids used to working in a more real world environment.

[valine]

I think you overestimate the competence of the majority of professors. They can’t require version control if they don’t understand what it is or how to use it.

[jandrese]

Back in the 90s I could kind of see this angle, but today it's so easy to set up a Gitlab there is no excuse.

[valine]

The problem isn't the accessibility of Git. I agree that it's easy enough to set up a Github account today.

I've been somewhat of a Git evangelist. I've tried and failed countless times to convince people of the utility of version control. Perhaps I'm just a poor teacher, but in my experience, the features that make version control useful are too esoteric for most people to grasp.

This may come off as arrogant and jaded, but I would speculate that at least 50% of the population is incapable of learning Git without extensive coaching. That's not to say it couldn’t be useful for most people; it's just that they can’t envision Git’s utility for themselves.

Utilizing version control to combat AI generated papers would require students and teachers have a deep enough understand of git to break their work up into small commits and branches. I don’t see that happening outside of the CS departments of big 10 schools.

[JohnFen]

> I've tried and failed countless times to convince people of the utility of version control.

Are you conflating version control (the topic) with git (a specific implementation)?

In my experience, it's really easy to clue people in to the value of version control.

Git specifically, though, is genuinely difficult to learn and understand.

[bsder]

> I've tried and failed countless times to convince people of the utility of version control.

Don't pitch it as version control. Pitch it as "homework submission process" that has the side benefit of being a backup if their laptop crashes. Students are used to horrible homework submission processes (looking at you Blackboard) and quickly adapt to seeing version control systems as a pretty nice alternative.

And, for about 25% of your class, the lightbulb will go on and they'll start using version control even in their other courses.

> at least 50% of the population is incapable of learning Git without extensive coaching

Mercurial can be taught to mere mortals just fine. Same with Subversion. Same with CVS. I've done that for all three. People tell me that lots of artists use Perforce quite readily.

Git is the only dumbass version control system that revels in being obtuse.

[numbsafari]

What % of the grade should be based on LOC and what % based on story points?

[jandrese]

Typically I'd expect the group project to be graded on its own and all students get the same grade from the project. However, when a project shows that some of the participants committed zero lines of code or suddenly dropped in enormous blocks then they should be asked about it. At the very least they should be encouraged to use branches and make frequent commits like in the real world.