Classes and assignments

Trying the university interface#

Sign up as University / Professor: Nelix reviews the request (usually within a working day) and your account lands on the university interface. You start on a trial: create a class, make its class code, and create assignments to try the auto-grader and the class dashboard with a small group. The trial has three limits, shown in the Your trial box on the Overview, Classes and Usage & seats pages: how many assignments you can create, how many students a class takes, and how many days it runs (counted from your approval). Students who join a trial class get the normal student start, with their own starter credit.

When a limit is reached, the page says so and offers Upgrade your classroom instead of silently failing: a third assignment, a student past the class size, or any new assignment or class code after the trial's last day. Nothing is deleted when the trial ends: your classes, assignments and your students' work stay readable.

Upgrade your classroom#

In the Your trial box, choose the number of students and the term and press Upgrade your classroom. Nelix sets up a University licence sized to your students ($99 per student per year, at least 20 seats; every enrolled student gets a bigger Nelix Agent allowance), raises the class sizes and the assignment limit, and replies in the lab. The licence is arranged with Nelix, not paid by card; Usage & seats shows the seats and the AI allowance once it is in place.

Teachers#

Joining a university as a teacher. Your university admin invites you from University → Teachers (an e-mail with an Accept invitation button), or shares the university's teacher link (you ask to join and the admin approves). No account yet? Create one with the same e-mail address, then open the invitation again and press Join as a teacher. Each teacher takes one university seat.

1. Create a class from Teaching: add a course first if your university has none (a subject, for example Digital Design 301), then Create class. Every teacher can do this, not only admins; you are the teacher of each class you create. Add more teachers on its Settings tab.
2. Invite your students on the class page, Students tab:
   • Invite by e-mail: paste the addresses (one per line, or separated by commas; up to 60 at a time) and press Send invitations. Each student gets their own Join the class link that works once, for 14 days. A student with an account joins at once; a new student creates a free student account with the code already filled in. The list under the box shows each address as Waiting, Joined or Expired (send it again).
   • Class codes: make a code to show on screen or send yourself (shown once, with a ready-to-send message). Lost it? Make a new one. Codes keep working until they expire or you choose Revoke in their ⋯ menu.
   Each student who joins takes one seat. When every seat is taken, the student sees This class is full, and you and the university's admins get a notice in the bell.
3. Create an assignment: the task and starter files, the tests, the marks (they add up to 100), the chip build settings, the deadline and the hint limit. An analog assignment starts from a lesson of the analog design path; lessons whose challenge is a question to answer or an idea to read (3.2, 9.1, 9.2) are listed but cannot be auto-graded, so they cannot be chosen.
4. Check the reference solution (the button on the assignment page): it grades your own solution with your tests and build, so you know the task is reachable and the area target is fair.
5. Open it. Students see it at once.
6. Late work (on the assignment page): after the due date students can still submit, and the submission is marked late. Choose how many marks a late submission loses per day, the most it can lose, and after how many days submissions stop. Students see these rules on the assignment. The late deduction is its own line under the mark; the grader's marks are unchanged.
7. Extensions: on a student's review page, Extension gives that student more days (with a reason only teachers see). Their work up to the new date is on time, the late rules count from it, and they get a notice.
8. Watch results on the assignment page, and download the marks as a spreadsheet (CSV): one per assignment, or the whole class (class page, ⋯, Export marks). Students are listed by the name they gave when they signed up (their e-mail address when they gave none).

Known-bug exercises. Known-bug exercise on the Assignments page makes a repair exercise from one of the lab's planted bugs: a small, working design (counter, FIFO, UART, ALU, CRC, FSM and others) with one deliberate change in it. The student gets the buggy file as the starter and must find and repair the bug; the design's own hidden tests grade the repair (they pass on the original and fail on the buggy copy), with lint and timing of the chip build. The exercise is created as a draft you can edit and open like any assignment; the planted line is never shown to students. The kind of bug (off-by-one constant, inverted condition, wrong reset value, …) is listed next to each one.

How much AI help your class gets#

On the class page, AI help in projects for this class sets how far Nelix Agent may go when a student's project test fails. Help always comes one step at a time, and the student asks for each step. Assignment hints are separate: you set those per assignment. A new class starts at the level your university chose in its Settings (AI level for new classes); when it chose none, the class starts at Full help.

The same four names are used on the University settings, the Teaching page, the class page and the student's assignment page, which shows the level as Nelix Agent on this work.

The setting applies to graded work: a project a student has submitted to one of your assignments. While the class has an open assignment, Where to look, What is wrong and No AI help apply the same rule to every AI tool on all of the student's projects: Design Chat writes no code, digital repair gives hints only, analog drafting is refused, and Autopilot starts no new runs (earlier runs stay readable). So code cannot be drafted in a side project and pasted into the assignment. When no assignment is open, students' own projects are not limited. If the class settings cannot be read for a moment, the tools pause and ask the student to try again rather than guess. Classes at Full help, self-paced learners, teachers and engineers are unchanged.

Students#

1. Join a class: open the Join the class link in your teacher's e-mail, or choose My classes → Join a class in the sidebar and type the code your teacher gave you. My classes in the sidebar always brings you back to your classes: what to do next, a Continue card with the five steps of your current assignment, and every assignment by class.
2. Open the assignment and write your design in the editor.
3. Run my tests (on an analog challenge: Run my circuit): runs the tests you can see, or simulates your values. It is free and does not hand anything in.
4. Get a hint if you are stuck. Each hint step costs marks (the assignment says how many).
5. Submit. The line under the assignment's title says the rules: your due date (a later one if your teacher gave you more time), what late work costs and when submissions stop, the hint cost, and how much Nelix Agent may help. Your work is graded automatically: the hidden tests, lint, timing and area. Submissions are graded one at a time, so a result can take a few minutes.
6. When your work is marked, a notice appears in the bell (and under Recent activity on Home). Open it, or the feedback page, to see your marks and what to improve.

Deadlines and other times on the class pages are shown in your own time zone, with its short name (for example 9:22 PM EDT).

For university admins: the Overview#

The University Overview starts with Next step (the one thing to do now: a teacher waiting for approval, seats almost full, a class that hasn't started, or Every class is on track), a Continue card for the class to watch with its five steps (teacher, students, work set, submitted, status), and how the university works in five steps.

Every class has one status, the same on the Overview and on Classes: Behind (more than half of the students haven't started the open work, or under 35 % of the work submitted), Not started (nobody has started the open work), On track, Complete (everything submitted), No work set yet or No students yet. A class without a named teacher shows the admins who run it. Classes with open work but no upcoming due date say so (2 open assignments · no upcoming due date).

What admins see of students' work. A university admin sees every class's progress and marks (the class page, the assignment page and the marks spreadsheets), but not a student's work (code, files, the hints they saw, the teacher's feedback) in a class someone else teaches: that stays between the student and their teacher. In a class the admin teaches, or a class with no named teacher (the admins run it), they see everything, like any teacher. To look at a student's work in another teacher's class (for example a question about a mark), add yourself as a teacher of the class on its Settings tab; the change is recorded.

The class's own teacher can also archive or delete it (delete only while it never had students) and add a co-teacher who already teaches at the university. A student who is in no class of the university any more gives their seat back, and can join again later on a new invitation when a seat is free.

Seats. Every teacher and student takes one seat; Usage & seats shows them, and Ask Nelix for more seats asks for more. Nelix Agent answers on Usage & seats count the whole university's answers this month; each person has their own allowance.

Ask Nelix Agent on the Known-bug exercises page opens Design Chat with the listed planted bugs in the question (which bug fits which class topic, how hard each is, how to grade the repair); each bug's row has its own button.

Ask Nelix Agent on the class pages#

The University Overview, Classes and Teachers pages, the teacher's Assignments list, an assignment's marks page, its edit page and each student's review page carry an Ask Nelix Agent button: it opens Design Chat (about your most recent project) with a question about what that page shows, for example how the roles work, how the grader marked an assignment, or which settings to choose. A student's assignment page has the same button, and one line that says what the Agent will and will not do while the assignment is open: at Where to look or What is wrong it explains and says where to look but writes no code (on the assignment and, while it is open, on the student's own projects); at Full help it may propose a fix; with AI help off it gives no answers on graded work. The mark always comes only from the grader's tests. The button shows only when the person has a project (Design Chat needs one); without a project the pages show How it works, which opens this page.