Not sure how helpful this advice is for students I'm in my late 30's have programming experience but had never touched Python until about 6 months ago.
What made Virtual environments work for me was switching to a different Editor. I use Visual Studio Code currently it works well with Virtual Environments.
When you first create a new python file in a given "project folder" it prompts you to create a new Venv and when you switch project folders it remembers and restores the Venv for each project.
One of my work colleagues pointed me to VSCode - it streamlined a lot of python things for me.
If your students are disciplined about creating a new folder for each project managing virtual environments vscode could help them.
Only issue I have is my work office has a corporate proxy setup and pip needs certificate to connect (and if I work remotely I have to turn this setting off) I wrote a shell script to toggle between the two proxy settings. Not sure if university will have the same issue proxy issues but if so this would certainly be a pain point for many students.
What made Virtual environments work for me was switching to a different Editor. I use Visual Studio Code currently it works well with Virtual Environments.
When you first create a new python file in a given "project folder" it prompts you to create a new Venv and when you switch project folders it remembers and restores the Venv for each project.
One of my work colleagues pointed me to VSCode - it streamlined a lot of python things for me.
If your students are disciplined about creating a new folder for each project managing virtual environments vscode could help them.
Only issue I have is my work office has a corporate proxy setup and pip needs certificate to connect (and if I work remotely I have to turn this setting off) I wrote a shell script to toggle between the two proxy settings. Not sure if university will have the same issue proxy issues but if so this would certainly be a pain point for many students.