1. Sign up for GitHub

GitHub has two types of accounts: personal user accounts and organization accounts. To get started, you and each student/co-teacher will need to create a personal account, if you or they don't have one already. Each individual user on GitHub should have exactly one personal account. There's no need to maintain a separate account just for teaching, we'll use an organization for that.

It's totally free to create an account, so go ahead and sign up.

2. Create an organization for your class

You must be logged into your personal GitHub account in order to create an organization account.

A GitHub organization represents a group of people working together, like a company or an open-source project. In this case, we'll use an organization to represent your class in school. You can name your organization anything you like. A common convention is to use some combination of the school name and course number. If you intend to repeat the course, you may want to include the semester or year in the name. You can always rename it later if you need.

Create an organization for your class.

3. Post your syllabus

You may want to create a repository with your syllabus and assignment description(s). That way, students can see any changes made over time and create issues to ask for clarifications. If the repository is public, other teachers can collaborate with you to make your materials even better.

See an example course repository.

4. Set up the assignments

See our guide on assignment setup.

5. Get started with Git and GitHub

We have various resources available for Git and GitHub:

• List of guides and tutorials for learning how to use them
• Open source training materials to you can use/customize for your classes
• Git cheat sheet
• Our community forum for teachers

If you or your students don't have a lot of experience with the command-line, check out GitHub for Mac and GitHub for Windows.