See what a student wrote

To help a student who is stuck, you usually need to see what they wrote. You do not have to collect anything. Their work is already somewhere you can open it.

How much you can see depends on your role on the account.

• Everything on your account

  If you are the team owner or an admin, every project belonging to everyone on your account is already in your projects list. It does not have to be shared with you.

  Good for checking on any student at any time, without asking them.

• What was shared with you

  If you are a teacher, you see your own projects, the copies you gave out, and anything a student shared with you.

  Good for everyday teaching: the exercise you set, and the student who is stuck on it.

Find their work

Open My Projects in the editor. The list has an Owner column and a filter that starts on All users. Choose one person to see only their work.

If you are an owner or admin, the filter covers everyone on the account. If you are a teacher, it covers the people whose work has been shared with you.

Open it and run it

The project works like any other. Open it, run it, and edit it with the student if that helps. If you are both in it at the same time, you can see each other's cursors. This is often the quickest way to solve a problem together.

Opening a project does not take it away from the student.

Running the program usually tells you more than reading it. Two things are worth doing before you say anything:

• Run it exactly as it is. The error they describe may not be the error they have.
• Try your own input. A program that works with the example often fails with a different value, and that is usually the lesson.

What next

If you need a mark rather than a conversation, use an assessment. It collects the work and grades it against test cases you write.