Streamlining Coding Assignments and Grading on the Cloud: A Preconfigured JupyterHub Image for Chemistry Education

Integrating coding skills into chemistry education is crucial for preparing students to meet the demands of modern research. However, the technical challenges associated with installing computational tools often discourage chemistry educators from incorporating programming exercises into their courses. To tackle these challenges, we developed a preconfigured image on Jetstream2, a U.S. academic cloud platform supported by the National Science Foundation. This image, shared with the community, allows chemistry instructors to effortlessly deploy a JupyterHub platform for their classrooms, facilitating the teaching of programming skills. Integrated with the automatic grading package nbgrader, the JupyterHub Web site created from this image enables seamless assignment creation, distribution, and automatic grading on a cloud-based platform. Students can access assignments directly through their web browsers without the need to install software or configure their local machines. This tool empowers educators to equip future scientists with essential coding skills, enabling them to tackle interdisciplinary challenges and drive chemical discoveries. To ensure the accessibility of this approach worldwide, we created a preconfigured image on the Google Cloud Platform and provided detailed instructions for setting up this nbgrader-integrated JupyterHub instance from scratch.