On the experience of using git-hub in the context of an academic course for the development of apps for smart devices

In this paper, we present the experience we gained in a Mobile Application Development course for Computer Science students at the University of Salerno. The course foresaw a project work conducted by students organized in teams. The goal of the project work was to design and develop Android-based applications for smart devices. The learning approach was based on collaboration (intra-team) and competition (extra-team). Students cooperated using GitHub as Computer-Supported-Collaborative-Learning tool for the implicit and explicit communication among team members and distributed revision control and management of software artifacts (e.g., source code and requirements models). All the developed applications underwent a final public competition prized by IT managers of national and international companies. IT managers expressed a positive judgment both on the students' competition and on the developed applications for smart devices. Also, the students provided very good feedback on the competition and on the GitHub support.