CSSE1001 - MyPyTutor

MyPyTutor is a Python tutorial system that is used in CSSE1001 for weekly tutorials. These tutorials contribute 10% towards the assessment for the course.

MyPyTutor runs locally on your machine but also has an online component. Typically, you will start MyPyTutor on your machine and then choose a tutorial problem to work on from the Tutorials menu. At any time you can save your (partial) answer on your machine and when you come back to that tutorial problem later your code will be automatically reloaded.

At any time, while working on a problem, you can check your answer by using the Check menu. This will give you feedback. You will either get "Correct" printed in the output window or some error message that hopefully will help you correct your code.

From the Online menu you can interact with the online part of MyPyTutor. You can log on to your MyPyTutor account and then interact with your online data. In order to gain marks for the tutorial problems you need to submit your (correct) answer before the due date (the due dates are shown in the Tutorial menu items).

The Show Submissions item in the Online menu allows you to track your progress, showing the problems you have submitted and if they are late or not. It also shows your percentage of marks so far.

As well as saving your work on your local machine you can also upload your answers to your MyPyTutor account and later download your answer to MyPyTutor. Note that you need to select the tutorial problem before you can download your saved code.

This provides you with a very flexible way of saving/loading code. This flexibility does come with a cost however. You may very well find you have several versions of an answer to a given tutorial problem: on your home machine, on your ITEE account, on a memory stick and on your MyPyTutor account. You need to be careful to make sure you are working with the most up-to-date version of your code.

Requirements

NOTE: in order to run MyPyTutor you first need Python 2.6 or 2.7 installed together with IDLE. Please go to http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~csse1001/InstallPython.html for instructions on installing Python.

MyPyTutor is restricted to the standard character set. If your machine is set to use the extended character set (for example Chinese) then you need to be careful setting up MyPyTutor. In particular the path to MyPyTutor needs to contain only standard characters and so using the default path suggested by the installer below is probably the best approach.

MyPyTutor Installation - Automatic Method

The following method automates (as much as possible) the manual method below.
First download mpt_installer.py (probably right click on the link and choose Save Link As).
You don't need to worry about the installer code that will appear if you open it in IDLE. Later in the course, however, some of you might find the code interesting.
Windows
If you have installed Python correctly then double clicking on mpt_installer.py will run the installer. If this does not work then try the Fallback Method below.
Linux
Change to the folder in which you installed mpt_installer.py, make sure it is executable, and run ./mpt_installer.py.
Mac
If the Linux instructions above make sense to you then do that. If not use the Fallback Method below.
Fallback Method
  1. Start IDLE
  2. From the File menu open mpt_installer.py
  3. From the Run menu choose Run Module - this will run the installer
  4. From the installer window choose the folder in which you wish to install MyPyTutor
  5. Read the details in the output window - it provided information on the installation
  6. Close the installer
  7. Close IDLE
You can now run MyPyTutor as described in the "Running MyPyTutor" section below.

NOTE: For Mac users the installer will create the MyPyTutor.command file that you can double click on to run MyPyTutor.

MyPyTutor Installation - Manual Method

Because both MyPyTutor and the tutorial files are able to be automatically updated you need to install them in a folder in which you have write permission.

We recommend you create a folder MyPyTutor in your home folder and install both MyPyTutor and the tutorial files within that folder.

You first need to check which version of Python you have installed and then pick the appropriate download. Unzip the appropriate zip file to your MyPyTutor folder.

CSSE1001 Tutorial Download - Manual Method

Before you start MyPyTutor you need to first download the CSSE1001 tutorials zip file.

This file contains all the tutorial information required to run MyPyTutor for CSSE1001. The steps required to install the tutorials are:
  1. Create a folder in which to unzip the tutorials (within the MyPyTutor folder, for example)
  2. Unzip CSSE1001Tutorials.zip in the created folder
You also need to create a folder in which you wish to store your answers (we also suggest you create and Answers folder within the MyPyTutor folder).

When you first run MyPyTutor it will ask you to choose the folder containing the tutorials (where you unziped CSSE1001Tutorials.zip) and the folder in which to save your answers.

NOTE: you need to carry out this procedure for each machine on which you wish to run MyPyTutor.

Recovering from a failure to install: If you make a mistake when installing MyPyTutor and it will not start up then delete the file mypytutor.cfg in your home folder and run MyPyTutor again. This should ask for the tutorial and answers folder again. If this still does not work please contact the course coordinator.

Running MyPyTutor

Windows Users: Simply move to the folder in which you installed MyPyTutor and, if you have installed Python correctly, double click on MyPyTutor.pyw (no console).

Mac and Linux Users: In a terminal change to the directory in which you installed MyPyTutor and run the program as ./MyPyTutor.py.

For Mac users (who used the manual method for installing MyPyTutor) here is a method to create a desktop icon so that you can run MyPyTutor by double clicking on the icon. First download mac_launcher.py to the folder that contains MyPyTutor.py. Next open mac_launcher.py with IDLE and then from the Run menu choose the Run Module option. Make sure the version of Python running in IDLE is consistent with the version of MyPyTutor. You will get a "magin number" error otherwise. You can now close down IDLE. That should have created a file "MyPyTutor.command" that contains one line that is the path to MyPyTutor.py. If you double click on MyPyTutor.command it should run MyPyTutor. You should be able to drag this file to your desktop and run it from there.

For all users: Use the Tutorials menu to pick a problem to work on. Once you have done this, you should see two windows: the window that contains both the description of the problem and the output text frame that displays output produced from running tests on your code; and an IDLE-like edit window in which to write your code. Some problems will preload code into your edit window.

The MyPyTutor problem window can be resized as a whole in the normal way. The two text boxes can be relatively resized by dragging the status frame. Your size configuration will be saved for next time.

The Help menu gives you a more detailed description of MyPyTutor.

WARNING: MyPyTutor uses the same GUI library as IDLE (Tkinter). Sometimes Tkinter causes newly opened windows to be hidden under other windows. If you find that either MyPyTutor or IDLE is not responding when you think it should it could be because a window has opened but is hidden.

Feedback

The MyPyTutor Feedback menu gives you the chance to provide us with anonymous feedback on any aspect of MyPyTutor. Feedback on individual problems is for comments on the problem you are corrently working on. Your code for that problem will automatically be attached to your feedback. Consequently, this feedback is not visible to other students.

The general feedback is for MyPyTutor itself. This feedback is visible to all students and can be found here.

NOTE: Because the feedback is anonymous, this system cannot be used for answering queries by students. If you want help on a MyPyTutor problem it would be better to talk to the course coordinator or a tutor.

If you have any comments or suggestions about this page, please mail Peter Robinson at pjr@itee.uq.edu.au