8  Create the iteration organization

This chapter is the checklist for creating your iteration organization and populating it from the templates in gitforsci-dev. The central gitforsci org and the development gitforsci-dev org already exist (Chapter 7); you do not create those. The only organization you create here is the one for this cohort.

Throughout, replace the iteration tag 00x with your own, for example cis or 001.

8.1 GitHub organizations are created in the browser

One manual fact to know up front: GitHub organizations are created through the website, under your account settings, not from the command line. The step below that says “create an organization” means doing it in the browser. Everything after that, once the org exists, can be scripted.

8.2 Step 1: Create the iteration organization

• Sign in to GitHub as the instructor account.
• Go to https://github.com/account/organizations/new and create a free organization named gitforsci-00x (substitute your tag).
• Confirm you are listed as an owner.
• Invite your test-learner account (Chapter 5) as a plain member, so you can later verify the member view.

8.3 Step 2: Generate the cohort website

The cohort website is generated from the gitforsci-dev/website template into your new org. The full walk-through, including filling in the iteration variables, is in Chapter 9. In short:

• On gitforsci-dev/website, use Use this template to create a new repository named website inside gitforsci-00x.
• Follow Chapter 9 to fill in the cohort variables, render, and publish.

8.4 Step 3: Create the per-cohort material repositories

Learners need their own copies of the material to work in. These are generated from the exercise and assignment templates in gitforsci-dev:

• For each exercise and assignment template in gitforsci-dev, use Use this template to create a copy in gitforsci-00x.
• Confirm each copied repository is visible to org members.
• If learners each need their own copy of a repository, the ghclass scripts in step 4 create them; you do not do this by hand.

8.5 Step 4: Invite learners and create their repositories with ghclass

Inviting learners and creating per-learner repositories one by one in the web interface does not scale and is error-prone. This work is scripted with the ghclass R package (https://rundel.github.io/ghclass/), and the scripts live in gitforsci-dev/admin.

• Collect learner GitHub usernames from the pre-course survey (Chapter 10).
• Open the admin project (gitforsci-dev/admin) in RStudio and confirm ghclass is installed (Chapter 5).
• Run the invitation script to invite every learner to gitforsci-00x from the username list.
• If the cohort uses per-learner repositories, run the script that creates them from the templates.
• Ask learners to accept the email invitation as part of their pre-work (Chapter 6).

New educator — the ghclass scripts are the reason the admin repository exists in gitforsci-dev. You do not write them from scratch; you run the existing scripts against this cohort’s username list.

8.6 Step 5: Verify with the test-learner account

Before you consider the setup done, switch to your test-learner browser and confirm, as an ordinary member:

• The iteration org page is reachable and shows the expected repositories.
• A material repository can be cloned in RStudio.
• A commit pushed from the test-learner account appears on GitHub.

If all three pass from the learner’s point of view, your organization is ready.

8.7 When to do all this

The setup in this chapter has to land in a sequence that gives learners time to finish the pre-work and gives you time to follow up with anyone who has not. That count-back timeline, with its buffer windows, lives in the pre-flight chapter (Chapter 10), since it ties the org and website setup together with the survey, the follow-up windows, and the dry-run into one schedule you work to.

Next, build the website (Chapter 9).