The task list
This page is about the task list (the single HTML page on the race server) — for information about how to specify the tasks themselves, including editing them, see creating the tasks.
See the default task list.
The task list is the page on the race server that defines the tasks which your students need to attempt. Tasks are grouped into phases which must be tackled in order: don’t allow your students to start a phase until they’ve completed all the task in the previous phases. However, with the pragmatic exception of phase 0, students can do the tasks within each phase in any order they want.
An example task on the task list. This is 1-ADD: on your server at /projects/tasks/1-add (or /projects/tasks/#task-1-add). The Add text button lets the user (if logged in) add a text for this task that will contribute to their report.
For some thoughts on using the tasks to teach, see teaching with the tasks and phases.
The top of the task list page (on your race server at /projects/tasks).
Individual tasks on the list
The task list contains all the tasks for the students to attempt.
Every task has:
- a name/id (the phase it’s in, and a mnemonic)
- a title
- statement of the problem it is addressing
- description of the solution (informally, this is similar to acceptance criteria for determining if it has been done)
- hints which give additional suggestions or things to think about when solving it
URLs of individual tasks
The “true” URL of an individual task uses the anchor tag to locate it within the (single) task-list page. For example:
/projects/tasks/#task-1-add
By default, the server will generate URLs in the form:
/projects/tasks/1-add
and automatically redirect to the form with the anchor tag. Task redirection is also case insensitive. If you don’t want this behaviour, you can disable it by switching the config setting IS_TASK_URL_WITH_ANCHOR to Yes, which always uses the URL without requiring redirection.
See more about the task config settings.