Topics

How to create, rename, order and archive topics, how a lesson differs from an assessment, and how to manage a topic's problems.

On a course’s Problems page (/teaching/<course>/problems), topics are sections with their problems listed right under them. A topic has a title, a mode (lesson or assessment), a schedule and a list of problems. The problems themselves live in the problem archive: a topic uses them without copying them.

Students see a topic once it has problems.

Who	Can
Owner, teacher, organisation admin	Everything on this page
Group admin	Open, close and change topic schedules for their own groups
Assistant	Only view

Screenshot to comeThe Problems page: topics with schedule, state and problems, one problem's action menu openTeacher account, a course with several topics; open the “…” menu of one problemstaff/teaching/topics

New topic

Select New topic at the top of the page.
Enter the Title (up to 200 characters), for example “Loops”.
Choose the Mode: Lesson or Assessment.
Select Create topic.

The topic is added at the end of the course, without problems and without dates, and focus moves to its Add problems button. Adding problems is described on Adding problems.

A topic’s row

A topic’s header shows its mode icon, title, schedule (or “Varies by group”), state and number of problems. The state is Open, Scheduled or Closed; when the topic is open for only some groups, it says, for example, “Open for 2 of 3”.

The arrow on the left collapses or expands the topic’s problems; this is remembered in this browser. Selecting the topic’s title opens the topic panel on the right.

The topic’s … menu:

Edit details and schedule: opens the topic panel;
Rename: edit the title in the row itself; Enter saves, Esc cancels;
Move up / Move down: changes the order of topics (students see topics in the same order);
Archive topic….

The topic panel

The panel (?topic= in the address) has:

the title: select it and type; Enter or leaving the field saves, Esc cancels;
Mode: Lesson or Assessment; a change applies at once;
Problems: how many problems the topic has;
Individual tasks: in topics that have them, the slots, how many students have a task, and the topic’s task pool (see Individual tasks);
Schedule for everyone and Groups: see Schedules and deadlines.

Lesson and assessment

	Lesson	Assessment
After the deadline	Submissions are accepted until Closes; a solution accepted after the deadline earns only part of the points (late credit)	Without a Closes date, the topic closes at the deadline
Open now / Close now for a group	No	Yes
Students’ practice runs while the topic is open	With the samples and their own input	With the samples only
Judging while the topic is open	Normal order	Priority in the queue
Notifications to students	When less than 48 hours remain until the deadline	When the assessment opens
Quizzes in the topic	Ordinary	New quizzes are timed and record leaving the window by default
Teacher’s Home and Activity	–	Listed under “Tests open now”; the activity chart in 10-minute steps

You can change the mode at any time, even while the topic is running.

A topic’s problems

Each problem row shows its position, its type (programming problem or Excel task), its title, a files icon (when the problem reads and writes files), its difficulty and how many students solved it (for example “12 of 25”, out of the students it is given to). A problem that is not published yet shows Not published instead: students see it once a version is published.

Selecting a title opens the problem in the problem archive. The problem’s … menu:

Excel results: the Excel task’s results page;
Test in editor: try a published programming problem yourself; these submissions never count in any course (see Test in editor);
Open in the bank;
Move up / Move down;
Remove from topic.

You can also reorder problems by dragging the handle that appears in place of the position number, or by focusing the handle and pressing ↑ / ↓.

A topic can have at most 200 problems.

Removing a problem

Choose Remove from topic in the problem’s menu.
If nobody has submitted yet, the problem is removed at once.
If there are submissions, the app asks whether to remove the problem from the topic and says how many students have submitted. Confirm with Remove.

What stays and what changes:

the problem leaves only this topic’s list; it is not removed from the problem archive;
students keep their submission history, and staff still see the submissions on the Submissions page;
the progress sheet no longer shows the problem’s column, because it is no longer given;
adding the problem to the topic again brings the earlier results back.

Shared problem lists

A topic’s problem list is sometimes used by other topics too, for example when the course was created as a copy of another course. The first time you change such a list (adding, removing or reordering problems), This list is also used elsewhere opens. It shows how many other topics use the list and in which courses.

Change only here: makes a copy of the list for this course; the other topics keep theirs.
Change everywhere: the change reaches every topic that uses the list. Only the list’s owner (whoever can edit it in the problem archive) can do this.

After you choose Change everywhere, the app does not ask again for that topic until you reload the page.

Archiving a topic

Choose Archive topic… in the topic’s menu.
Confirm with Archive topic.

The topic disappears from students’ lists (with its quizzes), but students keep their results and staff still see its submissions. An archived topic’s columns are not shown in the progress sheet.

Archived topics sit at the bottom of the page in the collapsed Archived topics (N) section, with the date they were archived and their number of problems. To bring one back, choose Restore in its menu: the topic returns to its place.

Empty topics

When the course has empty topics whose deadlines have all passed, the top of the page says, for example, “3 empty topics with past deadlines”. They are mostly left over from the old system. Students don’t see them.

Select Archive them.
Review the list of topics and confirm.

An empty topic has no problems, no per-group problem lists and no individual tasks. Topics without a deadline and topics with quizzes are never offered.

Individual tasks

Some topics imported from the old system have individual task slots: each student gets one problem per slot. Such a topic shows a line such as “Individual tasks · 5 students have one”. New individual task slots can’t be created.

The problems a slot is filled from are the topic’s task pool, in the Individual tasks part of the topic panel. It lists each problem with how many students have it. The pool holds exactly the problems added to it: organising the problem archive (collections) never changes it. Topics imported from the old system started with the problems of the collection they used then.

Add problems: opens the same Add problems window as for the topic’s own list (problem archive, other topics and sets); the chosen problems are added to the pool. A pool holds at most 200 problems.
Remove (the × on a row): the problem is no longer offered. If students already have it, the app asks first and says how many.

Changing the pool never changes tasks already given. A removed problem stays with the students who have it, with their submissions and marks, and nobody is given another problem in its place; such problems are listed under Given earlier, no longer in the pool. Only the course’s owners and teachers (and organisation admins) can change the pool; assistants and group teachers see it. Students never see the pool: each student sees only the problem they were given.

You give students their tasks in the student’s panel; see Students.

Likewise, some groups may have their own problem list for a topic, imported from the old system (“2 groups use its own problem list”); it is shown next to the group in the topic panel.

Schedules and deadlines
Adding problems
Quizzes: a quiz can belong to a topic