Do students Git it?: A Lightweight Intervention to Increase Usage of Advanced Git Features

Version control software, such as Git, is commonly used in Computer Science courses. Often students simply learn a few commands to submit an assignment without really understanding how the advanced features work and the benefits of version control. This research investigates the impact of introducing a Git tutorial in an introductory full-stack Web Development course. The semester with the tutorial intervention is compared to a previous semester with no tutorial intervention. The research consists of a survey at the beginning and end of the semester. From the surveys, we observe that students' perceptions of major Git concepts increased in both semesters. Also, when introducing a lightweight intervention of a tutorial, students' perceptions of concepts of how and why to create a branch in Git improve in a statistically significant manner. This research provides preliminary evidence that using lightweight interventions in assignments to engage students with tooling without reducing instructional time on other course concepts can encourage learning and usage of advanced tool features.