Discussion about existing VS Code for Education features, how they can be improved or enhanced, and how proposed new features could work.
HI! Overall this is great!!!
A couple of throughts as I begin to use this in my game design class independent of the courses you have written.
It would be great for students to be able to easily from the My Projects page make a copy of a project to allow a starter file to be used over & over or a revisit & update without losing the original project.
Also, it would be great to have an easy way to go back to the My Projects page from a project. (Maybe I just have not found this yet)
After participating in the “Getting Started with Visual Studio Code for Education” Teams meeting, I was asked to add my future feature request here so the team could see them.
Of course, it looks like you are adding more features to be able to track a group of students (a classroom or enrollment). Currently, without the student submitting screen shots I am not sure how I would verify that a student has completed a course. Even then…does a screen shot show their name and clearly display what they have finished? Something to consider might be a “course completion” certificate with their name or even better a link that can be shared with a teacher that verifies what they have completed (a digital resume tied to their username/email address of coursework completed).
One feature that is necessary is a log so instructors can be assured that students are actually typing into the code editor for projects and not just copy/pasting solutions they find on the web or might be provided by an AI. I realize that students could just re-type information they found online…but I would hope a change log would still reveal someone who is simply “copying the code”. There is a VSC extension called “Line History” that does a good job of time/date stamping each line of code (along with deleted lines) that would allow an instructor to see how the student is working/progressing on a project (although this only works on a client installed version of VSC, not the online version). Cengage >had< a great online IDE that showed the time a student spent on a project and the number of keystrokes (and maybe a copy/paste blocker). This was pretty nice until they switched to using an online version of VSC and none of those verification tools were available.
A second feature that I really liked in the former Cengage online IDE was the ability for the student to share a link with the instructor so I could either examine or have permission to edit the code. I liked the edit mode since I could make comments with suggestions of where they needed to make changes…focus their efforts, give them hints, etc. This was entirely asynchronous…so I’d get an email request from a student with a link along with a request for assistance…I could log into their code at my convenience and make comments/provide nudges…useful for online classes and my college courses where we may only be meeting once or twice a week in person.
I also think that being able instructors to tweak projects as needed (maybe change variables, parameters, etc.) will be useful to avoid solutions being shared online if a course is reused.
I see a lot of value in what you are putting together and hope that I can utilize this, or at a minimum, supplement my courses with some of this material.
Thanks!
Alan
Yes, a template might be necessary for them to get started on a project.