Pytutor

Homepage for Pytutor. Displays latest questions and allows users to ask their own question!
Preview for Sample Question. As shown in picture, shows interactive trace and user question.
Sample Worksheet. Professors can generate interactive trace examples as well as manual questions when needed.
Empty Question Page. Users can add their own responses to a question, as well as provide interactive coding examples!
Error Page. Hopefully, nobody goes down an unintended wormhole or something like that...
Try demo worksheet and have a a quick look at your result. (professors can see more detailed results)

Pytutor is a tool to allow python coders to do interactive exercises and collaborate. It aims to help teachers create interactive participation activities and collect information about the student's level of understanding.

Inspiration

We were inspired by a professor's need for something like Pytutor. There is an information gap between professors and students. Professors are unsure as to which parts of a given curriculum students may struggle with. Students tend to like seeing their code visualized in an interactive setting, giving them a deeper understanding of what is happening.

For this hackathon, our team decided to create a forum page with the increased functionality of the Pytutor visualizer. We want people with questions to have the ability to see their code executed.

What we learned

Each of our team members picked up valuable new skills during the time of this project, some were familiar with AWS, others with web design. All members had to pick up skills fast, and teach each other to get the project submitted.

How we built this project

We started with online Python Tutor framework for visualizing python code and adapted it to exemplify the best parts for student learning. We built Pytutor's front end with Javascript, HTML, and CSS. We built Pytutor's back end with Python and hosted the site through AWS.

Challenges

Some challenges we faced was working remotely in different time zones around the globe. Some of our members live in different continents across the world. So scheduling a time for collaborative team building was difficult in this regard. We adapted to the challenge by assigning different tasks to team members and meeting at reasonable times for everyone involved.

Pytutor's Future

*Addressing huge security concerns by converting user's code to interactive python code on client-side using pypyjs. *We really want beginners in programming to feel free to ask the silliest of questions and also, share interactive problems with their peers. With the help TA and other students monitoring the questions page everyone learns and doubts are solved quicker. *The story about how we were peer mentors and what we have experienced. *A little more about how it helps professors by putting together great analysis with the littlest of interaction on their part.