GitHub as backbone in Software Engineering course: Technology acceptance analysis

In the field of software engineering education, continuous adjustment of course content and technologies with real-working environment is crucial for developing students' skills that meet the needs of the labor market. The main goal of this paper is to present the research result regarding the use of GitHub in Software Engineering course which has characteristics of real-working environment: students are divided into up-to-five-member teams with adequate development roles and during the semester are working on project which encompasses full software development life-cycle. A pilot study was conducted in the end of the summer semester of academic year 2017/2018 on the sample of undergraduate students (N=78) whose study field is related to informatics. New measuring instrument was developed and consisted of scales related to the UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology) model, but also those related to learning value, learning satisfaction and ease of use to investigate in detail students' acceptance of GitHub in context of software engineering learning. Results of the study outlined following remarks: students find GitHub useful in team coding projects, its ease of use has positive effect on students' acceptance, as well as on learning satisfaction and learning value of software engineering in practice.