Courseware as Code Setting a new bar for transparency and collaboration

This Innovative Practice Category Work In Progress presents a case of creating and managing courseware as code. By managing all content for five central courses in machine-readable markup language within a GitLab instance, our school achieves rapid synchronized collaboration. Through GitLab, we facilitate change discussions, provide transparency in updates, and allow faculty, students, and even our workforce to identify issues and suggest content. This enables space for necessary, creative, and even innovative changes by giving all users a voice in the change process and setting a culture of contribution. In its first year, Courseware as Code enabled over 250 students in 30 classes to benefit from standardized yet flexible and up-to-date content. For our core cyber technical course, 29 instructors over up to three geographically disparate locations stayed engaged with 5,085 commits and 113 issues raised and discussed. To our knowledge, no other similarly sized and divided group of instructors has achieved this level of collaboration towards synchronized courseware.