Async nbgrader

A Jupyter Notebook server extension which adds:

• Async capabilities to nbgrader's auto-grading service.
• Export grades as a CSV file for the Canvas LMS

Installation

1. Clone this repo and install the pacakage with pip:

git clone https://github.com/illumidesk/async-nbgrader
cd async-nbgrader
pip install -e .

1. Create and activate your virtual environment:

virtualenv -p python3 venv
source venv/bin/activate

1. Install and Activate Extensions

Install and activate client and server extensions:

jupyter nbextension install --sys-prefix --py async_nbgrader --overwrite
jupyter nbextension enable --sys-prefix --py async_nbgrader
jupyter serverextension enable --sys-prefix --py async_nbgrader

Run the Auto-Grader

This package leverages the same Python API available with nbgrader. Therefore no additional changes are required to run the auto-grader. For example, once you have collected assignments, run the following command to auto-grade assignments with the async-nbgrader server extension:

nbgrader autograde "<assignment-name>"

Toggle to use the standard syncronous autograder

This package includes the option to set an environment variable to toggle whether to use the asyncronous version of the autograder or the syncrononous version (default is async):

Environment Variable	Description	Default
NBGRADER_ASYNC_MODE	Used to set whether the autograder runs syncronous or asyncronous mode	"true"

Export Grades as a CSV

Follow the steps below to export grades from the nbgrader database to a *.csv (default is canvas_grades.csv) file:

1. Export the Canvas LMS grades as a CSV file from your Course's gradebook by following these instructions.

2. Copy the CSV file to a location where the ild command has access to the exported CSV. (The ild command is used to export grades from the nbgrader database).

3. Run the ild export command to export grades from the nbgrader database:

ild export --canvas_import=/path/to/my/grades-from-canvas.csv --canvas_export=/path/to/my/grades-for-canvas.csv

By default, the ild export command uses the canvas.csv as the file to import grades from and the canvas_grades.csv to export grades to. You can override these values with the --canvas_import and the --canvas_export flags to designate the path and file name for the CSV file to import and export, respectively.

The ild command is a wrapper for the nbgrader command. Therefore all other flags included with the nbgrader CLI are available with the ild command, such as the --debug flag.

If successful, the output in the terminal should look similar to:

[ExportApp | WARNING] No nbgrader_config.py file found (rerun with --debug to see where nbgrader is looking)
[ExportApp | INFO] Using exporter: CanvasCsvExportPlugin
[ExportApp | INFO] Exporting grades to canvas_grades.csv
[ExportApp | INFO] Skipping second row
[ExportApp | INFO] Finding student with ID 358
[ExportApp | INFO] Finding submission of Student '358' for Assignment 'postgres-migration-test'

Contributing

For general contribution guidelines, please refer to IllumiDesk's contributing guidelines.

The async_nbgrader package installs the nbgrader package as a required dependency, therefore you should not have to install it explicitly.

The async_nbgrader package overrides nbgrader's default auto-grading service (included with the Formgrader extension) by converting the grading service from a syncronous service to an asyncronous service. Thefore it's a good idea to get familiar with the nbgrader documentation (although not a must) to setup your local environment by following these instructions.

Use pytest to run tests:

pytest -v

License

Apache 2.0