Engaging Students using GitHub as a Learning Management System

Student engagement is an important factor when it comes to the learning process. Students who do not feel engaged in their studies risk surface learning, are more likely to fail their exams and might even drop out of their education. The teaching community has tried different methods in order to increase student engagement. One of them is the Contributing Student Pedagogy (CSP), where students contribute to the learning of others and value the contributions of others. To facilitate this pedagogy different learning management systems can be used. One of these tools is GitHub, which is a social and collaborative environment, traditionally used for software development. This report further investigates the possibilities of using GitHub in education in terms of an interview and a literature study. Results show that using GitHub in education can lead to increased student engagement, if used in the right context. In conclusion, GitHub is a prominent tool with lots of potential to be used in and for educational purposes.