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Configuring Autograders

This documentation is under construction. Check back soon for detailed autograder configuration guides.

Summary of Autograding Architecture

The autograder system uses an “overlay grader” architecture that allows flexible grading configurations. Detailed documentation coming soon.

Empty Submission Detection

Pawtograder automatically detects empty submissions where students have not made meaningful changes to the starter code. When an empty submission is detected:
  • The submission is flagged with a warning indicator
  • Students are notified that their submission appears to be empty
  • Instructors can see which submissions are empty in the grading interface
This helps identify students who may need assistance or who accidentally submitted without completing their work.

Test Insights and Error Explorer

Pawtograder provides powerful tools to help instructors understand and address common test failures across student submissions.

Error Explorer

The error explorer groups similar test failures together, making it easy to:
  • Identify patterns in student errors
  • See which students are affected by each error type
  • View and copy affected students’ email addresses for bulk communication
  • Pin error groups globally to highlight common issues

Regrade Workflow

When you need to regrade submissions after fixing test issues:
  1. Launch a regrade directly from the error explorer
  2. Submissions are automatically preselected on the autograder page
  3. Choose to regrade from specific commits or enter a manual SHA
  4. Option to auto-promote the new submission as the active submission
This streamlined workflow makes it easy to regrade multiple students who encountered the same issue, without manually selecting each submission.

Quickstart: Java and Python

Build system integration guides for common programming languages. Detailed documentation coming soon.