Using nbgrader

With the reference deployment, instructors can start to use nbgrader. This section contains a rough sketch of what that looks like. For full details see the nbgrader documentation.

Preparing class assignments - Instructor

To use nbgrader, an instructor will primarily use the nbgrader command line program.

Create a list of students and assignments

Before doing this, the instructor will need to edit the nbgrader_config.py file with a list of students and assignments as follows:

c.NbGrader.db_assignments = [dict(name="ps1")]
c.NbGrader.db_students = [
    dict(id="bitdiddle", first_name="Ben", last_name="Bitdiddle"),
    dict(id="hacker", first_name="Alyssa", last_name="Hacker"),
    dict(id="reasoner", first_name="Louis", last_name="Reasoner")
]

You can also add an email field to each student and a duedate field to each assignment.

Remember to add new assignments to the nbgrader_config.py file as the assignments are created.

Create an assignment directory

Create a directory for each assignment’s source:

$ cd ~/nbgrader/<course>
$ mkdir source/<assignment>

Copy notebooks into assignment directory

Copy notebooks into the assignment directory:

$ cp ~/Problem1.ipynb ~/nbgrader/<course>/source/<assignment>
$ cp ~/Problem2.ipynb ~/nbgrader/<course>/source/<assignment>

Create a student version of an assignment

These notebooks should be prepared using the nbgrader “Create Assignment Cell toolbar”. Now create the assignment:

$ nbgrader assign <assignment>

After creating the student versions of the notebooks, put them into the ~/nbgrader/<course>/release/<assignment> directory, and remember to remove your solutions.

Release the assignment

Next, release the assignment to students:

$ nbgrader release <assignment>

Working with an assignment - Students

Fetch the assignment

At this point, students can fetch the assignment by doing:

$ nbgrader fetch --course <course> <assignment>

That will give students a copy of the assignment directory with all of the notebooks.

Submit an assignment solution

When students are done working the notebooks, they can submit the assignment by doing:

$ nbgrader submit --course <course> <assignment>

Grading the assignments - Instructor

Collect student assignments

You can collect submitted assignments by doing:

$ nbgrader collect <assignment>

This puts the students submitted work into the ~/nbgrader/<course>/submitted/<assignment> directory.

Grade the assignments

To enter those notebooks into the nbgrader web grading system, run:

$ nbgrader autograde <assignment>

By default, this will rerun all of the students notebooks.

If you don’t want to run them:

$ nbgrader autograde --no-execute <assignment>

Next steps

To see the full command line options for nbgrader, run:

$ nbgrader <subcommand> --help

Some other things you can do with nbgrader:

  • Run collect and autograde commands for a single student or notebook.
  • Collect a single assignment multiple times and regrade all or parts selectively.