One way or another, I feel they should come out of college knowing something about version control, but not in the first class. I can easily believe greenyoda that trying to learn programming and, say, git at the same time would be a disaster. I'm tempted to say you should just warn them that at some point it's going to be part of their class workflow, but I don't think that would fly bureaucratically. At the same time, it would be weird to just have a class in "version control"; it only makes sense in the context of another project. So maybe make it part of a lab-style class, with a focus on individual instruction, and RTFMing.
Then I get to my internship and have to learn Team Foundation Server... Sheesh.
This is the case in the classes I teach. We use Git as the primary vehicle for submitting assignments and tracking work. I usually spend the first week introducing students to the Linux shell and interacting with Git and Github.
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One way or another, I feel they should come out of college knowing something about version control, but not in the first class. I can easily believe greenyoda that trying to learn programming and, say, git at the same time would be a disaster. I'm tempted to say you should just warn them that at some point it's going to be part of their class workflow, but I don't think that would fly bureaucratically. At the same time, it would be weird to just have a class in "version control"; it only makes sense in the context of another project. So maybe make it part of a lab-style class, with a focus on individual instruction, and RTFMing.
Then I get to my internship and have to learn Team Foundation Server... Sheesh.
This is the case in the classes I teach. We use Git as the primary vehicle for submitting assignments and tracking work. I usually spend the first week introducing students to the Linux shell and interacting with Git and Github.
Why not assign something like http://try.github.io/levels/1/challenges/1 as homework instead?