a different approach perhaps... bring the students into moodle vs some place else. have them create threads here in the forum. give them working knowledge of the wiki, and of the tracker. and of git.
https://docs.moodle.org/dev looks like some major work has been done in past and recently for updating various plugin types and applications (shifter / grunt) for javascript, how to use github, and almost a step by step process within reason.
https://tracker.moodle.org there are bug reports and new feature requests. the "create issue" wizard walks folks through a good amount of information.
https://moodle.org/mod/forum forums are all over the place with folks asking for help.
instead of shifting folks some place else. get them working with folks already working with moodle and interacting with them.
on many of the hobby websites out there say www.koiphen.com, www.tractorbynet.com folks create a thread and work through it. perhaps starting a few different threads. but still keep to some main thread. or wiki page, or tracker issue, no need to be any major order to anything. do this or that and you fail. there are a lot of folks here on the forums, tracker, docs/wiki pages, that are professionals in there various fields. while yes it can be nice to have someone for direct contact. with moodle it little bit of everything. multi mentors and students working side by side. one may know more about a subject vs another one. and vice vs. being able to get different feedback along the way from different folks. and different ways of looking at things. and how to go about it. in all thoughts it is a group / collaborative effort. but the need to get information into a forum thread/post and/or docs and/or tracker. so it is there to be gone through by others. and not setting there working all privately by themselves. or in a private class room forum. were they maybe a handful of folks to get information from.
the need to search, and simple create a thread and ask about something to find leads. and if things have or have not been covered already. along with some pointers of were to go. have seen many folks start up thread of asking "GSOC project" or some X project for class.
one the 2 websites www.koiphen.com and www.tractorbynet.com general folks (all walks of life from those in grade school to those about to kick the bucket) come in say hey i need some help about this project. ((different stages of projects from beginning to end)) to some complete newbie if not baby in thought (never dealing with large machinery. or dealing with contractors, or other.) for moodle it may be dealing with tracker.moodle.org, never getting into say YUI, JQuery, moodle framework of over all different types of plugin managers (err plugin types). never dealing with a given "code styling" that folks are asked to follow. never working with github, etc... all that is easy stuff. and no real need to rely on one or handful of folks. a lot of the community members has already been there done that. and can give either detailed or good direction of were to find information.
if folks are having a problem coding not sure about a class, function, object, variable, etc.. they can easily ask or possibly post a short bit of code into a post. or zip up a few files and attach them to a post. for others to look at and get feedback on. have seen this many times, and i have been around recently for little over a month.
as an instructor and needing to go over stuff. at end of class / project cycle, they can submit work, and give you a list of links. to go through. completed or not completed. but getting folks into the community of folks were information is at. and getting them to ask for help, and state were there having problems, or updates on progress helps here, were the folks are at. vs some private blog / wordpad file on there usb stick. this lets others see what is happening, and get some pointers of how to better help them. yes it is about netorking and finding folks. and forums / docs / tracker. is a source of that networking with moodle. and yes sometimes folks will subscribe to a thread. or get a bit more to following certain threads / tracker issues. because it is important to them for what ever reason. and in that more direct mentors / collaborative work happens.