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Migrating from GitHub Classroom

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classroom50-sync[bot] edited this page Aug 16, 2026 · 4 revisions

Migrating from GitHub Classroom

How to bring an existing GitHub Classroom into Classroom 50: what the import carries over, what you rebuild, what behaves differently, and how to avoid conflicts while both tools touch the same organization.

The migration path

The import copies each assignment's starter repository into your organization as a fresh template repository and recreates the assignments in a new classroom. GitHub Classroom ties one classroom to one organization; you can migrate several legacy classrooms into a single Classroom 50 organization by importing each one.

Prerequisite: the target organization is set up for Classroom 50 (the one-time setup in the Web Teacher Guide or CLI Teacher Guide).

Web app: open your organization at https://classroom50.org/YOUR-ORGANIZATION and click Import from GitHub Classroom. Pick the classroom from the list of GitHub Classrooms your account administers, review the import summary, and confirm; nothing is created until you do.

CLI:

gh teacher classroom migrate --source cs50-legacy --target cs50-fall-2026

--dry-run previews without changes. See gh teacher classroom migrate for source resolution, naming flags, and the failure model.

What carries over, and what doesn't

Imported: the classroom (as a new Classroom 50 classroom), its assignments (individual and group, with group sizes), and a copy of each starter repository as a template in your organization.

Not imported:

  • Rosters. You re-onboard students for the new term; see Add students.
  • Scores and past student repositories. They stay where they are, in the old organization, and remain yours to keep.
  • Autograding configuration. GitHub Classroom's autograding setup doesn't translate 1:1; the next section covers your options.

Reusing your autograders

Classroom 50's declarative tests fill the role of GitHub Classroom's autograding presets: input/output, run-command, and pytest checks defined on the assignment, with no grading script to write. For most assignments, migrating the autograder means re-entering those tests on the imported assignment.

If you've invested in a working autograding.json workflow, you can keep it and skip Classroom 50's grading pipeline for that assignment; see Bringing a GitHub Classroom autograder along.

What behaves differently

Most concepts carry over unchanged. The differences, roughly in the order you'll meet them:

  • Students don't self-select from a roster. GitHub Classroom lets a student pick their roster entry from an invite link. In Classroom 50 you add students by GitHub username (individually or by CSV), which sends the organization invitation; the accept link works once they've joined. There are no roster identifiers. See Add students.
  • Due dates don't cut anything off. A due date only marks later submissions late; there is no cutoff date. To end an assignment, use Close submission, which blocks new accepts and sets student repositories to read-only. See Course lifecycle and end of term.
  • Groups replace teams. There's no team-creation step and no group names: the first student to accept (the founder) creates the shared repository and invites teammates, and the repository is named after the founder. See How group assignments work.
  • Scores live in your organization, not a dashboard. Every graded submission publishes a Release on the student's repository, and collection gathers results into scores.json in your classroom50 repository. You download scores as CSV from the submissions page; students read their results from their repository's Releases, not inside the app.

For features GitHub Classroom has and Classroom 50 doesn't, see Known limitations.

Running both in the same organization

Don't leave active GitHub Classroom classrooms in an organization you use with Classroom 50. The two tools disagree about the private-repository forking policy, and each keeps flipping the setting back, which shows up as recurring settings warnings. Archive the old GitHub Classroom classrooms once you've migrated. See Why org policies sometimes "drift".

Your existing scripts still work

Each student gets a normal GitHub repository named <classroom>-<assignment>-<username>, as with GitHub Classroom, so scripts that automate git operations against student repositories generally carry over unchanged.

Further reading

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