nbchkr: Notebook checker

A lightweight solution to mark/grade/check notebook assignments.

How

Installation

$ pip install nbchkr

Preparation

Write a jupyter notebook main.ipynb, using tags to denote specific cells:

• answer:<label> A cell where students are expected to write their answers.
• score:<total> A cell with assert statements to check an answer. Worth <total> marks.
• hide A cell that should not be shown.

See documentation for further examples and features.

Release

Create a student version of the notebook:

$ nbchkr release --source main.ipynb --output student.ipynb

Check

Given a student notebook notebook: submitted.ipynb

$ nbchkr check --source main.ipynb --submitted submitted.ipynb --feedback-suffix -feedback.md --output data.csv

This writes to screen the score (total and for each question) and creates feedback.md as well as reporting the results to data.csv.

Given a pattern of student submissions it is possible to batch check all of them:

$ nbchkr check --source main.ipynb --submitted submissions/*.ipynb --feedback-suffix -feedback.md --output data.csv

Why?

An alternative to this tool is nbgrader which offers a comprehensive course management solution and includes features such as:

• An email server to be able to communicate with students;
• The ability to release assignments, feedback and marks directly;
• Addons to the jupyter notebook interface.

nbchkr is meant to be a lightweight alternative.

Documentation

Full documentation is available at: nbchkr.readthedocs.io