The customization.json file is primarily how you will configure Rainbow Grades. You will need to modify it to fit your grading scheme and gradeables. You can modify this file at any time and re-run Rainbow Grades, so small incremental changes are recommended.

You are allowed to have C/C++ style comments in a customization.json file. When Rainbow Grades is built, it produces a new comment-free version called customization_no_comments.json.

What follows is a partial specification for the customization.json file. Information on other parts of the file are written on separate pages also grouped under “Rainbow Grades” on the navigation sidebar.

• field: "display"
  type: array of strings
  REQUIRED

The display field specifies what will be shown in the output HTML and individual student reports. It can contain the following:

• "instructor_notes": Shows notes for early warnings, plagiarism, etc. only to the instructor
• "grade_summary": Shows the overall score and score for each syllabus bucket (e.g. Homework)
• "grade_details": Shows the score for each gradeable
• "final_grade": Shows final grade letters and some statistics about the final grade distribution.
• "exam_seating": Shows exam seating assignments. To display the assignment on the Submitty course homepage, the instructor should make sure “Display Rainbow Grades Custom Message” is enabled in “Course Settings” on the Submitty course page.

• "display_rank_to_individual": Shows each student’s rank in the course, independent of section.

• field: "display_benchmark"
  type: array of strings
  REQUIRED if using "curve" in "gradeables" described below

  This array specifies which benchmarks will be displayed to instructors and students. Valid options are:

  • "average": The average for each gradeable
  • "stddev": The standard deviation for each gradeable
  • "perfect": Perfect scores (excluding extra credit) for each gradeable
  • "lowest_a-, "lowest_b-", "lowest_c-", "lowest_d": Based on curves, the lowest scores that will earn the name of the benchmark.

• field: "benchmark_percent"
  type: associative array / mapping from string to float
  REQUIRED if using "curve" in "gradeables" described below, or if any grade-letter benchmarks are used in "display_benchmark" above.

  Each of the benchmarks starting with “lowest” should be in this array along with the minimum percentage of total points necessary to obtain that grade. For example to require an 82% for an A-, there should be an entry in the "benchmark_percent" array: "lowest_a-": 0.82

• field: "section"
  type: associative array / mapping from string to string
  REQUIRED

  Rainbow Grades puts a label on each section, and you must specify what those labels are. Any string can be used as a label, but any section not listed in this array will be treated as invalid and ignored. These labels are only displayed on the instructor’s output.html.

• field: "messages"
  type: array of strings

  These messages will be displayed at the top of the instructor summary and each student’s individual Rainbow Grades report.

• field: "final_cutoff"
  type: associative array / mapping from string to float
  REQUIRED if using "final_grade" in "display"

  Each grade letter that you want should be associated with the minimum overall semester score required to get that grade. This array is unrelated to benchmarks.

• field: "manual_grade"
  type: associative array / mapping from string to associative array

  For each student that you want to assign a manual grade to, their id must be mapped to an associative array with a field "grade" mapped to a string with the letter grade you want to give them, and "note" containing any note about the adjustment. The note is only visible to the instructor. For example, to give user smithj a grade lettter of D with a reason of "Put in extraordinary effort.":

  "smithj" : {
     "grade": "D",
     "note": "Put in extraordinary effort."
  }
  

• field: "warning"
  type: array of associative arrays

  This is similar to the "manual_grade" field, but is used to automatically generate a note for each student that fails to obtain a target score on a list of gradeables. For example, to add a note of “Low HW 1&2” to all students that fail to get at least 34 points on their hw01 and hw02 scores combined, the code below could be used.

  "warning": [{
     "msg": "Low HW 1&2",
     "ids" : [ "hw01", "hw02" ],
     "value" : 34
  }]