Student Workbooks

Sep 10, 2025 - 2 min read - 313 words

When I teach a programming course, I always set them up with a student workbook where they can enter in all the demos and practice assignments I have them do in class. You can see a couple of samples here, here and here.

It’s easy to set up and, once it’s in place, you can re-use it each term. Just follow these steps.

Building a Template Repository

Create a new repository on your computer with the files/demos you want the students to start with.
Push it to whatever GitHub account/organization you want. I put all my workbooks as public repositories under the GitHub account I use for my work (see the samples linked above).
Go under the “Settings” for your repository and turn on the “Template Repository” checkbox.

Voilà! You now have a workbook to distribute whatever way works best for you (I use GitHub Classroom).

Best Practices

Here are some common things you should have in your student workbook template.

Aways add a ReadMe.md file. This is your chance to introduce the workbook to your students.
Be sure it has a .gitignore file to filter out whatever files/folders you don’t want to track in the repo. For example, if I was teaching Python, I would copy this content from gitignore.io and paste it into my .gitigore.
I also add a .gitattributes with at least the following.
```
* text=auto
```
I typically put a lot more in mine, using the sample from David Laing’s article Customize Your gitattributes to be come a git ninja.

Beyond that, it’s a matter of taste as to what other content you want to add to the repo. I typically include a src folder as a “parent” to other starter kits I want students to use. When all is said and done, I would have something like the following.

Directorysrc
- Directory-start-here- A simple intro demo they can run
  - ReadMe.md
  - sample.py
- Directory001/ The first hands-on demo in class
  - …
.gitattributes
.gitignore
ReadMe.md