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Full Documentation: Introduction

Overview

This documentation provides a step-by-step guide to setting up an autograder for programming assignments using the autogradescoper package. The autograder is designed to work with Gradescope, an online platform for grading programming assignments.

Gradescope Autograder Documentation

The Gradescope Autograder Documentation offers a comprehensive guide on setting up the autograder.

Types of Assignments for Autogradescoper

The Autogradescoper package streamlines the setup of the Gradescope autograder for various R programming assignments.

Autogradescoper is ideal for:

  • Assignments in the R programming language.
  • Tasks requiring students to implement specific functions.
  • Assignments that can be automatically graded using predefined test cases.
  • Projects with constraints such as execution time limits or restricted use of certain packages.

Typical Example Assignments

A typical assignment is structured as follows:

  • A single assignment usually contains one problem.
    • For multiple problems, see Configuration for details on adding additional problems.
  • There is a 'correct' solution used to evaluate the student's submission.
    • The default evaluation mode compares the student's function output to the prepared solution's output.
    • For assignments without a 'correct solution' (e.g., graded on output accuracy), use the --skip-solution option. See Custom Scoring Function for more details.

This documentation explains how to set up the autograder for these types of assignments.

Installation Not Required

Users do NOT need to install the autogradescoper package. The package is designed to be downloaded (via GitHub) and executed by the Gradescope Autograder. Users need to prepare the autograder files and upload them to the Gradescope platform. See Example Use Cases or Creating a New Assignment for setup instructions.

The Autograder Files

According to the Gradescope Autograder Documentation, the Gradescope Autograder requires the following files:

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|-- setup.sh            ## setup script - run once to build the Docker image    
`-- run_autograder      ## startup script - run for each student submission

The autogradescoper package assumes additional files for R programming assignments. The recommended structure is:

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|-- setup.sh                
|-- run_autograder          
|-- config/
| |-- config.yaml      ## configuration file     
| |-- config.prob.yaml      
| `-- preload.baseonly.R 
|-- solution/
| `-- ${filename}.R    ## change ${filename} according to the assignment.
`-- args/
  |-- test.1.args        
  |-- test.2.args         
  |-- ...
  `-- test.${N}.args

Structure of the Documentation

The rest of this documentation explains how to prepare the autograder files for an R programming assignment. It also provides detailed instructions on testing and debugging the autograder on the Gradescope platform.