nbgrader: manual grading similar to original nbgrader (formgrader)

[DataScienceUWL]

My class assignments contain a lot of written responses and other work that must be manually graded. Having to flip back and forth between the assignments screen and the student notebook to leave feedback and to enter scores is tedious and time-consuming.

It would be really nice to have something like the original formgrader interface (see here - https://youtu.be/5WUm0QuJdFw?t=947) where we could just leave feedback and change scores all in the student notebook and have the score updated automatically in the assignments screen.

[DataScienceUWL]

Even better would be the ability to hide everything but the Student Answer cells to limit the scrolling ...

[williamstein]

Having to flip back and forth between the assignments screen and the student notebook to leave feedback and to enter scores is tedious and time-consuming.

You might try opening two browser tabs on cocalc, since collaborative editing works fine with courses (not just notebooks).

[DataScienceUWL]

Of course, using two browser tabs helps, but isn't nearly as straightforward as manual grading in nbgrader. Thanks.

[DataScienceUWL]

It's beyond my capability, but would it be hard to write a script that copies collected assignments into the directory structure needed for classic nbgrader, then run nbgrader in classic view and copy back to distribute to students while populating the grade.md files?

I'm asking because I don't know if this is difficult or not ...

[williamstein]

It's possible. I'm definitely not going to do it, since it's a huge amount of work; probably for me it would be more work than implementing what you requested above. For somebody else the situation may be different.

[DataScienceUWL]

Gotcha, thanks!

[DataScienceUWL]

One, possibly simple thing, that would help is for the manually graded question scores to be pre-populated with the max number of points possible. At least for me, it's far easier to subtract a point here or there than it is to manually enter the points earned on each problem.

[DataScienceUWL]

Also, when manually scoring, the problems appear in the assignment/nbgrader list in a different order than they appear in the notebook which is awkward for grading.

[williamstein]

I'm bumping the priority of this up.

[wmwolf]

Another vote of support for this. The vanilla nbgrader formgrader interface is pretty great, and it creates an excellent formatted file for feedback. In addition to making manually graded cells much less tedious, it also makes assigning partial credit on autograded cells and extra credit easy to assign.

I originally left CoCalc and set up my own JupyterHub server for this reason alone. For various reasons, that didn't work out for subsequent semesters, so I'm back to CoCalc, and this is the main pain point for me as an instructor.

[szazs89]

Another vote of support for this. The vanilla nbgrader formgrader interface is pretty great, and it creates an excellent formatted file for feedback. In addition to making manually graded cells much less tedious, it also makes assigning partial credit on autograded cells and extra credit easy to assign.

I think manual grader's html form (of the submission) should be invoked from the ${warning sign} Edit... link. After grading, that filled form is to be returned (as Released feedback) instead of GRADE.md. IMHO

[novoselt]

I think for a new user it is not necessarily obvious that "our nbgrader" is different from "just nbgrader" and it would be nice to have the interface as close as possible to the official version. And yes - being able to see and enter grades right in the student notebook, including partial credit or bonus points, or overriding automatic grades would be very nice too.

[williamstein]

This whole ticket is really vague "grading similar to original". Tickets need to be ridiculously precise, e.g., one specific concrete thing that can be done. Otherwise it just sits in limbo forever. I'll make a new ticket that is about manual grading.

[williamstein]

https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc/issues/7088

[williamstein]

I think for a new user it is not necessarily obvious that "our nbgrader" is different from "just nbgrader" and it would be nice to have the interface as close as possible to the official version.

100% agree. I think (1) we should do more to make it clear that the implementations are different -- any suggestions?, but (2) I fully agree that we should make the actual functionality as close as possible.

Regarding (1) it could be good to be careful to call it "CoCalc Nbgrader" everywhere or something, and have that be a link to a page explaining the situation.

[wmwolf]

This whole ticket is really vague "grading similar to original". Tickets need to be ridiculously precise, e.g., one specific concrete thing that can be done. Otherwise it just sits in limbo forever. I'll make a new ticket that is about manual grading.

For me, here are a few specifics. If you'd like, I can open them up as individual issues/feature requests. All of these deal with processing assignments after running nbgrader's autograder, but before returning them.

• Assign points within a notebook. That is, once I open a student's notebook, I should be able to assign point values within the notebook, perhaps through an enhanced nbgrader toolbar interface. Perhaps students could have their own version of this interface for viewing scores and feedback (see below). I should be able to override choices that the autograder has made
• Leave feedback per cell right within the notebook as I'm going through it. While this is achievable today by simply adding markdown cells within the notebook to be returned, a special feedback interface would be more elegant, and could allow for customized styling to draw students' attention when reviewing the returned notebook, perhaps within an enhanced nbgrader toolbar interface.
• Ability to grade "in parallel" Some sort of button or dropdown interface should take me from the "current" problem on one student's graded notebook to the same problem in another student's graded notebook. Ideally, this would not keep opening up new tabs each time, or at least automatically move to the next tab, scroll to the "right" spot, and close or otherwise hide the old tab.

My goal is to never have to use the "assignment" view in the course file in between running the autogravder and returning the assignments.

[williamstein]

I think it would be great for you to make individual tickets for each of the above. The description are also already very clear and useful, but individual tickets would encourage filling out the design more.

E.g., for grading using an nbgrader like toolbar, are you envisioning selecting different types of feedback?

Thanks!