For instructors teaching software development, one of the biggest logistical challenges is assignment distribution and feedback at scale. How do you give large groups of students access to course materials, keep solution code private, and still deliver meaningful, contextual feedback without lots of administrative overhead?The GitLab for Education program provides qualifying institutions with free access to GitLab Ultimate, enabling instructors to build professional-grade workflows that mirror real-world software development environments. In this article, you'll learn how Stephen G. Dame, a lecturer in the Computing and Software Systems department at the University of Washington, Bothell, uses simple workflows in GitLab to manage everything from course materials to student feedback across multiple classes.From aerospace to academia: Bringing GitLab to the classroomDame came to academia with years of experience as a chief software engineer at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, where GitLab was used for aerospace projects. As an adjunct professor, he became an early advocate for GitLab within the university, joining the GitLab for Education program to access the full feature set needed to run structured, scalable course workflows."GitLab provides the greatest way to organize multiple classes, student assignments, lectures, and code samples through the use of Groups and Subgroups, which I found to be unique to GitLab compared to other repository platforms."Stephen G. Dame, University of Washington, BothellSet up groups: Build the right structure before writing a line of codeThe foundation of an effective GitLab-based course is a well-planned group hierarchy. GitLab's Groups and Subgroups allow instructors to model the natural structure of a university department institution, course, and role with precise, inheritable permissions at every level.Dame's structure places the university at the root (UWTeaching), with each course occupying its own subgroup (e.g. css430). Within each course sit repositories for lecture-materials and code, alongside dedicated Subgroups for students and graders. Instructor materials remain private, while student and grader subgroups are configured with controlled permissions so that assignment briefs and solutions are visible only to the right people.Permissions cascade downward through the hierarchy via Manage > Members, allowing Dame to add students to a course's students subgroup with Reporter access and an expiration date tied to the end of the academic quarter. Students can clone and pull from assignment repositories but cannot push — keeping solution code firmly under instructor control.Students are guided to set up SSH keys across all their working environments (local machines, cloud shells, virtual machines) so they can clone repositories and receive weekly updates via git pull. They copy relevant code into their own private repositories to manage their own version history.Tip for large classes: For larger cohorts, adding students by hand is impractical. GitLab's REST API lets you automate subgroup creation and membership from a list of usernames. Below is a sample Python script that handles this: import gitlab