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Classrooms

Assignments and submissions

Make a class, give it something to build, and get it back: the teacher's steps and the student's, from the first class to the first hand-in.

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You need Pro, Classroom or the free 30-day class trial to make a class. Your students need only a free account, or a login card you print for them.

1. Make the class

  1. Go to /class and find Create your class.
  2. Type a Class name, such as 9th grade electronics, and how many Students you expect. On Free there is no number to pick: the trial holds twenty.
  3. Leave Start from on A blank class, or pick the 12-week course or a curriculum pack to assign its work in one go.
  4. Press Create class (Create my class on Free, which starts the trial). The class page opens with its six-character join code.

2. Get your students in

Read out the join code, or press Copy invite link and send the link: a student who follows it lands on the join form with the code already in it. For students with no email address, make login cards under Students without email instead. Each student appears on the roster as they join.

3. Assign work

On the class page, under Assign work:

  1. In What to assign, choose A template (one of Mokxi's built-in projects), One of my projects or A lesson.
  2. In Which one, pick it. Type in the search box above the list to narrow it down.
  3. Give it a Title for the class if you want one other than its own name, and a Due date if it has one. Both are optional.
  4. Press Assign it.

The work is on every student's class page at once. To hold parts of a starter circuit in place first, lock them before you assign it (see locking the starter circuit). To have Mokxi measure every hand-in, add checks to the assignment.

4. The student starts and submits

On their class page, the student presses Start beside the assignment. The editor opens with your starter or lesson loaded and the assignment attached. Your starter stays yours: their first save makes their own copy.

When they are done, they open the Save menu in the editor's header and press Submit to my class. That saves the project and hands it in, as it is at that moment. There is no separate upload and nothing to attach. For a lesson, their progress goes with it, so you see how many steps they passed.

Once they have submitted, their button says Continue and opens their own copy. They can submit again whenever they like; the latest hand-in is the one you see. Students can follow joining a class and submitting work.

5. Read what came back

Each assignment on your class page shows how many have submitted and a grid of the class against it. Under a project assignment, What came back lists each hand-in with one line of what the student changed, and Changes opens the rest (see what changed). Send feedback leaves a note the student sees on their class page. Grade it runs the assignment's checks on your own machine.

What you should see

  • The class on /class under My classes, with its join code.
  • Each student on the roster as they join.
  • The assignment on every student's class page, with Start.
  • A hand-in counted on the assignment as soon as a student submits, and the student's card on the Wall showing that circuit.

If it does not work

  • There is no Create class form, or it asks you to upgrade. Free makes no classes of its own after the trial. Choose Pro or Classroom, or start the trial if you have not had it.
  • A student cannot join: "This class is full. Ask your teacher." The class is at your plan's seats. See seats.
  • The student has no Submit to my class item. They opened the project some other way. Ask them to open the work from Start or Continue on their class page, so the assignment comes with it.
  • The class page says new submissions wait. A trial that ended or a plan that lapsed pauses new students and new hand-ins. Everything already handed in stays readable.
  • A row says the submission is private. It was handed in before copies were kept, and the student's project cannot be read from here. Ask them to submit again.

The two kinds

An assignment points at one of two things.

A project. A built-in template or one of your own circuits. Assigning your own private circuit keeps it private: the students in that class can open it, read-only, and nobody else can. It does not go into the gallery, onto your profile or into search.

A lesson. One of the built-in lessons, or one you wrote yourself. The student follows the steps in the editor and the simulator checks the circuit at each checkpoint. A private lesson of yours is made unlisted when you assign it, and the form says so first.

A class holds up to two hundred assignments.

Locking the starter circuit

An assignment is often a circuit the class is meant to build around rather than rebuild. Lock the parts and wires you want held and they stay where they are for everybody who opens it.

Select what you want held and press Lock in the properties panel, or use the canvas toolbar's more menu: Lock selection, Unlock selection, Lock all and Unlock all. Lock the code in the same menu holds the code of every board in the document; it carries a tick, so the menu says what is true.

The flags are on the document, so they travel with everything the document travels with: a share link, an export file, and the copy a student forks.

Who may take a lock off. Work opened from a class assignment belongs to the class, so only a teacher of that class may unlock it, and the role comes off the class the server hands back, not off the URL. A student who forks the assignment owns their copy and still may not unlock it, which is the whole point of a locked starter. Anywhere else, a lock is undone by whoever owns the project, which is you on the assignment you are building.

For you the lock is a badge rather than a wall: your own gestures are not refused. The room refuses a lock change from anybody who is not the project's owner on the server as well, so a modified browser changes nothing for anybody else.

The simulation never sees a lock. A locked part is an ordinary part to the engine, and the circuit runs exactly as it would have.

What changed

Each student works on a copy of the starter you gave the class, so the useful question is not what the circuit is but what the student did to it. Under each project assignment, What came back lists everybody who submitted with one line saying exactly that: 3 parts and 5 wires added, 1 wire removed, sketch changed. You can read a whole class off that list without opening anybody.

Changes on a row opens the rest of it:

  • Parts added, removed and moved, each with its type and its id.
  • Wires added and removed, named by the two pins they join rather than by their id, so a wire the student redrew between the same two points does not count as a change.
  • Properties changed, with the old value and the new one.
  • Net labels renamed, added and cleared.
  • Sticky notes put down, taken away and rewritten. A note that was only dragged somewhere else is not a change; a note is its words.
  • Code, as a line by line diff of every file that differs, on every board.

Underneath is the student's own circuit with the changes drawn on it: what they added glows in the accent, everything the starter had and they deleted is ghosted back in, dashed and dim, where the starter had it, and a part they dragged has a thin arrow from where it was to where it is. Hide the changes takes the drawing back to the plain circuit.

Two things deliberately do not show up. Locks (a held part, a held wire, read-only code) are how you set the exercise up rather than something the student did. And a submission you cannot open is a submission you cannot compare: a student's project in a class is always private, so the row says so instead of guessing.

Removing one

Removing an assignment removes the submissions with it, and the page says so before it does.

A class room

An assignment that points at a project can carry a live collaboration room, so the whole class opens the same circuit together from their own class page and nobody has to be sent a link. The room holds the whole class (twenty-one people) when the teacher is inside the trial, and has no people limit on Pro or Classroom (up to 100 people at a time, as fair use). See rooms and how many people fit.