How it fits together
The grader already knows the answer, because the generator wrote it
Most tools do one of these three things. The value is in the seam between them: an
assignment whose rubric is machine-checkable, graded by something that has the key,
and explained back to the student by something that can replay the solution.
01 — Generate
One specification, four documents
Pick a schema — Sakila, Northwind, Chinook, or your own — set difficulty and skill
coverage, and the generator emits everything at once. Multiple versions of the same
assignment keep an exam honest.
Excel rubrics carry machine-checkable assertions. That is how the grader later tells
a hard-coded number from a calculated one, and a correct formula in the wrong cell
from a missing one.
assignment · rubric · answer key ·
TA guide · starter.xlsx · solution.xlsx
02 — Grade
D2L ZIP in, marked work out
Import the submission ZIP straight from Brightspace. Each question is scored against
the rubric with partial credit — logic and approach, not string matching, so a
student with the right idea and a typo does not get a zero.
Feedback PDFs come back named to match the file each student submitted, ready to
re-upload, with a gradebook CSV alongside.
per-question scores · partial credit ·
feedback PDF per student · gradebook.csv
03 — Explain
Replay the solution, clause by clause
The tutorial engine takes a marked answer key apart in the order it was built —
base table first, each join as the columns it brings arrive, then the filter, then
the sort — and runs it after every stage.
Students see what each clause did to the data: which rows the WHERE removed, the
moment a join multiplies 2,500 rows into 4,000, and why.
staged walkthrough · live row diff ·
two-voice narration · captions · MP4
