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Buggy Racing

Step-by-step process for running a Buggy Racing project

Contents of this page:

In a nutshell: you need to decide how you’re going to customise the project, get the server up and running, and then run the project with your students.

The steps below break this right down so you can see what’s involved and the sort of things you need to think about before you start.

From set-up to first student login…

Decide how the students will get the initial editor source code

Cloned from their own GitHub fork (done automatically or manually?), or just unzipped from a shared file?
→ distributing the code.

Decide how you want your students to work

On their own machines, on hosted microservers like Pythonanywhere or repl.it, or on your college or institution’s own server?
→ where to work?

Get the server running

On your own server, or in the cloud. It needs a database to connect to, and must be accessible over the web: so you’ll need to know its URL, which should be running over HTTPS. It’s a standalone Flask server that’s helpfully dockerised so it is well-behaved on cloud services like Heroku, or (if you or your IT team are confident) on your own school server.
→ installing and hosting

Customise it

Run through the set-up phase, making the config fit to the way you or your institution want to run the project. Most settings have sensible defaults, so this isn’t too arduous.
→ customising

Publish the task and tech notes

The config settings not only control how the server runs, but also aspects of the project tasks you’ll be giving to the students, and the supporting material. Once you’ve done the set-up and edited the task list (if you need to), publish them (you can publish tech notes externally if you want to write or host your own).
→ creating the task list
→ publishing tech notes

Register your students

You’ll need to upload a CSV file of your students — this might be as simple as first-names-as-usernames, or could be a detailed data downloaded from your college or learning management system (like Moodle, Canvas, or Blackboard). The server has a utility to help you prepare this from existing spreadsheets.
→ registering students

Add colleagues and Teaching Assistants too

You can add new users — including staff — at any time. In fact you can change the config after the set-up phase too (although it’s best to get everything as close to what you want before your give your students access).
→ registering students

Give your students access

Notify your students of their own passwords (which they can change once they’re in)… your project has begun!

…Students do the work….

Students do tasks, in phases

They must tackle the phases in order, but can choose how thoroughly they implement each task. The default project looks broadly like this (you can change this by editing/adding/removing tasks):

  • Phase 0 is just to get the software running
  • Phase 1 is making basic improvements
  • Phase 2 introduces business logic (the race specs)
  • Phase 3 introduces breadth and complexity (multiple buggies!)
  • Phase 4 adds users and the API
  • Phase 5 adds more feature-like problems
  • Phase 6 is the open road

→ about the tasks and phases

Run races and post results

Depending on your schedule — weekly? nightly? now-and-again? — you can download buggies, calculate the outcome of a race, and upload the results. Winning or losing is fun (and hard to control), but qualifying for a race is the success the students have control over, and the incentive to fine-tune their editors.
→ running races

Keep an eye on buggy uploads and note-taking

Although students are not doing their development work on the race server, it can provide some visibility of engagement or lack of it for early intervention with students who need a little more support.
→ checking on progress

…Wrap up the project

The buggy racing project doesn’t handle submission for you — that’s down to you and your learning management software (if any). But you can configure a submission deadline and clear links to your submission information or page.
→ how students submit their work

Deactivate the student records and shut down the server

You’re done!