Course configuration

Directory layout

A course is specified by a single directory, with the following structure:

exampleCourse
|-- courseInfo.json # course specification (see below)
|-- questions       # all questions for the course
|   `-- ...         # one subdirectory per question
|-- tests           # all the tests for the course
|   `-- ...         # one subdirectory per test
|-- clientCode      # library code that can be used in any question
|   |-- library1.js
|   `-- library2.js
|-- serverCode      # code only accessible from server.js in questions
|   `-- secretLibrary1.js
`-- clientFiles     # general files available from the client at all time
    |-- refs.html
    `-- formulas.pdf

• Example course directory in PrairieLearn

courseInfo.json

This file specifies basic information about the course, like the title and users:

{
    "name": "TAM 212",
    "title": "Introductory Dynamics",
    "userRoles": {
        "mwest@illinois.edu": "Instructor",
        "zilles@illinois.edu": "TA",
        "mussulma@illinois.edu": "TA"
    }
}

• Example courseInfo.json

• Format specification for courseInfo.json

User Roles

Each user has a single role assigned to them. These are:

Role	Description
Student	A student participating in the class. They can only see their own information, and can do do tests.
TA	An assistant instructor. They can see the data of all users, but can only edit their own information.
Instructor	A person in charge of the course. Has full permission to see and edit the information of other users.
Superuser	A server administrator. Has full access to everything.

User roles Student through Instructor can be set in the courseConfig.json file. The Superuser role can only be specified in the server config.json file.

The detailed list of permissions for each role is:

Operation	Student	TA	Instructor	Superuser
overrideScore: Submit question answers with pre-determined scores.			Yes	Yes
overrideVID: Load specific (non-random) instances of questions.		Yes	Yes	Yes
seeQID: See question ID strings.		Yes	Yes	Yes
viewOtherUsers: View data from any other user.		Yes	Yes	Yes
editOtherUsers: Edit data from any other user.			Yes	Yes
changeMode: Change the current interface mode (Public/Exam).			Yes	Yes
seeAvailDate: See the date availability information for tests.		Yes	Yes	Yes
bypassAccess: Bypass all access restrictions.			Yes	Yes
viewErrors: See server error messages.			Yes	Yes
viewCoursePulls: See git pulls of course data.		Yes	Yes	Yes
editCoursePulls: Pull the course data from git.			Yes	Yes
deleteTInstances : Delete and reset tests.			Yes	Yes
seeAdminPages : View admin pages with extra options.		Yes	Yes	Yes
createQIDWithoutTID: View questions outside of a test.			Yes	Yes
createQIDWithoutTIID: View questions outside of a test instance.		Yes	Yes	Yes
Automatic access to all courses.				Yes