Scaffolding Version Control into the Computer Science Curriculum

Abstract

Version control systems (VCS) are widely-used in the software industry. They provide a powerful, collaborative framework that allows software engineers to work together effectively. VCS allow users to track changes and merge ongoing work into concurrently evolving software projects. Distributed VCS such as Git, allow a great degree of flexibility, and provide powerful options for managing personal code and evolving collaborative content. Power incurs responsibility, and introducing collaborative coding and version control tools to new developers can create many challenges. Yet these tools, once mastered, are crucial skills for professional developers. In this paper, the authors introduce VCS to computer science students both in a custom environment specifically designed to support new developers and in a commercially-available native environment suitable for more experienced students. Results show that proper introduction of these powerful tools can make early exposure a positive and valued experience.

Meeting Name

22nd International Conference on Distributed Multimedia Systems, DMS 2016 (2016: Nov. 25-26, Salerno, Italy)

Department(s)

Computer Science

Keywords and Phrases

Computer software; Education; Education computing; Engineering education; Information management; Multimedia systems; Software engineering; Students; Visual languages; Collaborative systems; Computer Science Education; Education technology; Pedagogy; Profession-based learning; Scaffolding; Version control; Computer control systems

International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

978-189170640-0

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2016 Knowledge Systems Institute Graduate School, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Nov 2016

Link to Full Text

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