GitHub Education Limits: Are Codespaces & Actions Minutes Shared Across My Class?

[OmriLeshem1234]

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I am a verified GitHub teacher, teaching a C programming course with 110 students. I noticed that my GitHub Education plan provides 180 hours of Codespaces and 3,000 GitHub Actions minutes per month.

Are these limits shared across my entire class, or are they per student? 180 hours of Codespaces doesn’t seem enough for all students—am I missing something?

Additionally, I see that verified students also receive 180 hours of Codespaces and 3,000 Actions minutes. Is there a way to leverage this for my class to better distribute the available resources?

[adityashibu]

For GitHub Education accounts, the 180 hours of Codespaces and 3,000 Actions minutes are typically per student, not shared across your entire class. Each student would have access to their own 180 hours of Codespaces and 3,000 GitHub Actions minutes per month.

To better distribute the available resources, you could encourage students to optimize their usage of Codespaces by:

• Shutting down their Codespaces when not in use.
• Using smaller or less resource-intensive environments for assignments or projects.
• Recommending they use local setups for certain tasks if possible.

If you're finding that the 180 hours of Codespaces isn't enough, you could also look into applying for additional resources through GitHub Education's support or possibly using GitHub Classroom for better resource management, which may offer additional flexibility in terms of student collaboration and resource allocation.

[OmriLeshem1234]

Thank you for your response! Do students need to take any action to receive their 180 hours of Codespaces? Specifically, do they need to apply for the GitHub Student Developer Pack to access it?

[adityashibu]

Yes, they can apply for the GitHub Student Developer Pack using their Education ID or enrollment letter, basically anything that proves their enrollment with an Educational Institution

[jamesgun76]

That’s an interesting question, Omri....I’ve faced something similar when managing large classes, kind of like how we use flipgrid video to give every student their own space to contribute. Curious to see how GitHub Education handles these limits per student.