General questions about Lab.computer
Lab.computer is a platform for both teachers and students. It offers a cutting-edge environment for programming coursework, practice and assignments. You can maintain programming notebooks with all required packages, data, software and background processes. You can share a version with students where instructors have removed key parts that explain the core concepts. Students can focus on the concepts and not worry about setup. Lab.computer allows instructors to do auto-grading and other grade management tasks through an improved version of NBgrader.
Yes, Lab is compliant with Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations
Getting started with Lab.computer
All you have to do is create an account. Go through the Docs for related readings. View our recorded demo or book live demo and we can get you set up! For quick questions, leave us a message for live help.
If your code requires any packages, you can install locally in your directory through apt-get, anaconda, source or any other means as you would in your local Ubuntu OS.
You can always download the Jupyter notebooks or any other files you need to access locally.
Operating Lab.computer
Of course. And we will start it for you automatically.
Yes, you can use the upload feature of notebooks.
Yes, we have a special feature to import and export a full operating system for students. It will copy the notebook with but strip out the portions that students need to fill in notebooks. Anyone can download these notebooks and get the exact same version of the Operating System.
It is not currently designed to run jobs. We will log a user out if inactive for a specific period and the job will shut down.
Jupyter Notebook is just the top-level assignment. You can abstract more complex parts of your code as a package and then import it from the Jupyter Notebook. These complex pieces of code, if they can run as a Jupyter Notebook kernel, can enable autograding and easy evaluation with lab.computer. Think of Jupyter Notebook as the user interface for the solution, with or without complex code files.
Python and R are supported by default but you can install any other language kernel from the internet. Jupyter has kernels for more than 50 languages available.
Lab.computer for instructors
There is no limit except they have to be all unique users. Also, there is a limit on the size of submissions (2GB per assignment) which includes only text files.
All accounts are equal. Instructors can run the assignment system and ask students to join it. We are working on some other roles and RBAC.
Yes, We allow instructors to check plagiarism on a student's assignment. We integrate with the internet version of MOSS.
Lab.computer for students
You can now do programming assignments online. Lab.computer notebooks can be edited and run. You can make notes and get much better practice. You can have backend components as part of the book. For example, everytime you read a SQL book, a mysql server is instantiated with it. If it is part of a class, you can easily submit assignments.
The number of examples available to you for practice vs for assignments is determined by the instructor.The number of examples available to you for practice vs for assignments is determined by the instructor.
We are working on building a number of courses/books.