Teaching Command Line and Git Skills Using Exercises with Interactive Visualizations

Abstract

Command line and version control skills are vital to computer science students during their education and as they enter the software industry. These skills are commonly taught to undergraduate students via traditional lecturing methods and brief hands-on activities. Many students struggle with learning the Git version control system because they are not familiar with the command line, or they do not understand how Git works internally. Recent research highlights the effectiveness of using interactive visualizations to teach computer science concepts. Thus, we developed novel command line and Git exercises with interactive visualizations. These exercises integrate with learning management systems to automate grading. We tested the effectiveness of the exercises in a CS2 course at a large research institution by conducting pre-assessments before and post-assessments after the students completed the exercises. We found that students performed significantly better on both the command line and Git post-assessments than on the pre-assessments. Furthermore, we found that students with less experience with the command line and Git achieved a significantly greater improvement from the pre-assessments to the post-assessments. Additionally, we found that students with different levels of command line and Git experience did not perform differently on the exercises. Therefore, the exercises provide a novel tool for teaching command line and Git concepts to undergraduate computer science students with any level of command line and Git experience.