nb_extension_empinken

Jupyter notebook extension for background colouring selected cells.

Install the latest version from the default branch in this repository:

pip install --upgrade git+https://github.com/innovationOUtside/nb_extension_empinken.git

Or from a particular branch (eg the BRANCH branch):

pip install --upgrade git+https://github.com/innovationOUtside/nb_extension_empinken.git@BRANCH

Install a released version from PyPi:

pip install nb-extension-empinken

The extension should be automatically installed and enabled.

If you need to do things manually:

jupyter nbextension uninstall empinken
jupyter nbextension install empinken --user
jupyter nbextension enable empinken/index

Four buttons are defined provided that toggle the colour of selected code or markdown cells:

• activity cells (blue);
• student annotation cells (yellow);
• tutor feedback cells (pink);
• solution cells (green).

From the nbextesions_configurator panel, you can control which buttons are selected and what colour styling is applied:

When cells are toggled, a tag is set on them that is used to apply the styling:

Currently, the following tags are used; style_activity, style_solution, style_student style_commentate UPDATED TO: style-activity, style-solution, style-student style-commentate

History

Originally developed in support the OU distance education course TM351 Data Management and Analysis, the extension provides toolbar buttons that highlight selected cells with particular background colours.

The extension broke after a year or two of use, but has been patched and made more customisable since then.

The original use case allowed course material authors to style activity related cells with a blue colour theme, matching the convention used in online VLE materials.

A pink colour was used in production by the course team to highlight prodcution related course team discussions in notebooks, or cells that contained errors.

The pink colouring button was used by tutors during course presentation (i.e. in support of direct teaching) to colour feedback cells they had added to students' marked work. Somewhere along the line, the feature came to be known as "empinken"...

The updated version of the extension also includes a yellow cell highlight, that I think can be used in at least two ways:

• firstly, as an activity prompt to students in provided materials that they need to write something in the notebook as part of the activity;
• secondly, as a way for students to highlight cells that they have added to the notebook to distinguish them from content that came with the original notebook.

The green solution styling was added in response to a module team request for a style that could be used to distinguish solution cells.

Future Considerations

The extension could be generalised to allow particular notebook cell tags to be used to identify cells that should be coloured in particular ways. So e.g. in configurator, associate the tag "activity" with a selected blue etc. See the related nb_extension_tagstyler extension that explores how to use cell tags to invoke the application of Bootstrap alert styling to correspondingly tagged cells.

Maybe also consider a setting that would colour all student created cells yellow (or whatever) by hooking something on to the notebook's cell add button to tag cells as contributed? Or use a pre-distribution step to tag all cells in notebooks provided to students as distributed?

Better support for hidden/revealable solutions in activities is an ongoing consideration. Basing this around appropriate tags would seem to be a sensible approach,