Frequently Asked Questions

Alps is an adaptive learning platform for computer science teachers and their students in K-12 and higher education. Our goal is mastery for all students, not only the few who have a tutor. You teach CS hands-on from your textbook, and Alps auto-grades each submission, adjusts practice to each student, and steps in with a hint when someone is stuck. You can also replay a student’s code to see how they reached an answer. Whether you teach a formal class or a CS bootcamp, you can use an Alps curriculum as your main materials or to supplement your own. Our team can also import your curriculum and make it interactive.

It’s free. Go to alps.2sigma.school and click "Sign Up." Use your school email to sign in with Google or Microsoft. Teachers get all core features right away, at no cost.

After you sign in, click "Create Class" on your dashboard, pick a primary textbook, and name the class. Then add students from the class’s People page. Share the join link from Copy Invite link, or link a Google Classroom course to bring in its roster. If your school has connected an LMS like Canvas, open Alps from your LMS course and link it to the class. Students join the first time they open Alps from the course. You can also add activities made from your own materials with Custom Activities.

Students can join your class with the join link on the People page, from your LMS (like Canvas) through LTI, or through Google Classroom. A school admin can also bulk import them from a Google Sheet. Students don’t need to create an account when they sign in with SSO or open Alps from your LMS.

Popular open-source curricula are free on Alps, including CSAwesome, Mobile CSP, Python for Everybody, Data 8 (Inferential Thinking), and many more. You can also buy licensed textbooks from our partner publishers. You can turn your own materials into activities with Custom Activities, and Bulk Import turns a whole worksheet or exam into activities in one paste. Our team can also import your own curriculum as a textbook.

To ask us to add a textbook or curriculum, email support@alps.2sigma.us.

Alps supports Python, Java, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, SQL, C/C++, block coding in Snap!, AlpsBlocks and Blockly, and Jupyter notebooks, plus a cyber range for cybersecurity courses. Students code right in the browser, so there’s nothing to install. It works on Chromebooks and any device with a modern browser.

We’re adding new languages and environments all the time.

On every plan, including the free one, multiple-choice questions, puzzles, and code with unit tests grade automatically the moment a student submits. Python and Java code also gets semantic checks, which show how the code was written and never change the grade. You see each student’s score, the test results, and the lines each check matched, and you can change any score. Automatic grading gives each activity full points or none; only you can give partial credit. Short answers, and code with no automatic result, wait for your review unless AI grading is on. If an activity has both code and a written answer, the whole activity waits. See how grading works.

No. Semantic checks show how Python and Java code was written, with each rule marked as a pass or a miss. They never change whether an activity is correct or how many points it earns. When an activity has unit tests, the tests decide that.

After a student submits. Running code while they work doesn’t start it. It also runs when you regrade an activity or revert a manual grade.

Yes. Change the score, and Alps marks it as manually graded so automatic regrading won’t overwrite it. If your class is linked to Google Classroom or an LMS, the new score goes to that gradebook. To undo it, revert the activity to automatic grading.

Pathfinder is the AI tutor built into Alps, on coding and Parsons activities. It is not a chat box, and a student never types a question to a language model. When someone is stuck, Pathfinder offers a fixed set of choices — on a coding activity, a hint, an outline to work from, or the subproblem as a drag-and-drop puzzle; on a Parsons puzzle, a hint, a simpler version, subgoal labels, or a worked example — and the student picks which kind of help they want. Hints start as a nudge, get more specific as a student keeps trying, and don’t give away the answer. You see the help each student used, and you can turn Pathfinder off for any assignment, including a test.

BloomIQ uses a mastery model to estimate where each student stands on every skill, then groups your class by mastery and engagement on the topics you pick. In one click, you can create personalized coursework for each group that challenges advanced students and gives extra support to those who need it. You review every group before you publish, and you can move students, swap problems, or set due dates. Each student also gets an ungraded practice feed at their level.

InsightLens is a real-time dashboard for your class. Spot struggling students early and see which concepts need more class time. It shows student progress, time on task, common misconceptions, and mastery trends.

Yes. Alps is fully FERPA compliant. It uses student education records only for the educational purposes your school sets. We’ve signed data privacy agreements with many school districts, and we can sign yours too. See our terms of service and privacy policy for details.

Yes. We’re a member of the A4L Student Data Privacy Consortium, and two of our signed agreements are public. One is our DPA with Sycamore Community Schools, on the standard multi-state NDPA v1.0 form. The other is Kent City School District’s Exhibit E, where a district joined the same terms through our General Offer. We’ve signed others that aren’t posted publicly. Your district can join the same terms by signing our General Offer (Exhibit E), usually the fastest route, or send us its own DPA to review and sign. Email privacy@alps.2sigma.us to start.

Yes. Alps is COPPA compliant. It collects only the minimum information needed for educational purposes. It never collects personal information from children under 13 without school consent. Alps doesn’t use student data for advertising and doesn’t sell any personal information.

Alps uses student data only to provide educational services, such as tutoring in Pathfinder, progress reports in InsightLens, and differentiated instruction in BloomIQ. 2Sigma never sells student data or uses it for advertising. We share it with third parties only as needed to provide the service. See our privacy policy for details.

Alps uses language models to help with tutoring, practice, feedback and grading, and to help teachers create activities. No personally identifiable student information is sent to a language model, and we don’t train models on identifiable student work. Pathfinder is not a chat box: a student never types a question to a language model. Teachers can change any grade and turn Pathfinder off for any assignment. We never run cheating detection, and we never decide whether a student cheated.

Alps follows the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. It uses industry-standard security, including tight role-based access controls and secure cloud infrastructure. 2Sigma is a member of the EdSafe AI Alliance Industry Council and takes part in the A4L Student Data Privacy Consortium.

The signed-in app has no ads, no ad network, no tag manager or marketing tags, and no session recording. Two service providers run on every page, one for product analytics and one for error reports, and the app loads its fonts from Google Fonts. Anything else loads only when a lesson needs it: the in-browser Python runtime and any library a program imports, video from YouTube or Vimeo, and the Snap! and AlpsBlocks editors (AlpsBlocks is built on the open-source Scratch editor) from 2sigmablocks.org, a site of ours kept separate from the app. The step-through code view also sends the code in the editor to Python Tutor to run. Our privacy policy names each one and what it receives. The full sub-processor list is available on request.

How it’s enforced. The signed-in app is served cross-origin isolated (Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy: same-origin with Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy: require-corp), so the browser blocks any cross-origin resource that hasn’t opted in. Embedded video frames are marked credentialless. In browsers that support that attribute, the player loads with no access to the viewer’s YouTube or Vimeo account. Today those include Chromium-based browsers such as Chrome, Edge, and ChromeOS.

Yes. Alps works with any LMS that supports LTI 1.3, including Canvas, Schoology, Moodle, D2L Brightspace, and Blackboard. Your school connects the LMS, and a teacher links the course to an Alps class. After that, students and teachers open Alps from the course with single sign-on. Coursework you publish in Alps from then on shows up as a column in the LMS gradebook, and scores go there automatically when grading finishes. Students join the Alps class the first time they open it from the course. To bring in the whole course roster, click Resync list.

Link a Google Classroom course to your Alps class from the class’s People page, and its roster comes in. Resync list picks up later changes. Coursework you publish in Alps shows up in Classroom automatically, with a link that opens the assignment in Alps. Grades go back to Classroom when grading finishes. Signing in with Google works on every plan.

Schools on Google Workspace for Education can turn on Alps for students and teachers by installing it from the Google Workspace Marketplace.

Students and teachers can sign in with Google, Microsoft/Azure AD, Clever, ClassLink, or LTI 1.3. They use the school accounts they already have, so there are no new passwords, and student data gets extra privacy safeguards. For a different SSO provider, email support@alps.2sigma.us about a custom integration.

Google and Microsoft sign-in work on every plan, including the free one, with no setup in Alps. Your district adds Alps in Clever or ClassLink, and your Alps org admin turns it on in Settings.

Sign-in and rosters are separate. A join link brings students in on every plan. Rosters come from Google Classroom, an LTI 1.3 LMS, or a bulk import. Clever and ClassLink handle sign-in only.

Yes. Alps is listed in the Clever App Gallery. Your district adds Alps in Clever, and your Alps org admin turns it on, so students and teachers sign in to Alps with their Clever accounts.

Yes. An org admin fills in a Google Sheet template with your sections, teachers, students, and enrollments, then uploads it. Your whole roster comes in at once.

Yes. Educator Basic runs your whole class for free. It includes the entire open-content catalog, 10,000+ auto-graded practice problems, Pathfinder, one-click differentiation, and auto-grading with class analytics. There are no section or student caps, no credit card, and no expiration date. Most teachers never need more. See what the paid plans add on the Pricing page.

There are three tiers for K-12 and three for higher education. For K-12: Educator Basic (free), Educator Premium (priced per section, per year), and District License. For higher education: Instructor Basic (free), Department Premium (priced per student, per term), and Campus License. Every plan is open to schools of any size. The free plans run a whole class. Educator Premium and Department Premium add rubric grading of code and short answers, Bulk Import of a whole worksheet or exam in one paste, Clever and ClassLink sign-in, rosters from Google Classroom or an LTI 1.3 LMS, server-side OpenAI keys for students, and higher usage limits. The District and Campus Licenses add bulk roster import from a Google Sheet, and our team can import your own curriculum as a textbook. Starting prices are on the Pricing page. Your exact price comes from the quote you generate in Alps.

In K-12, never. The teacher or school provides access, and students join with a link, from your LMS, or with SSO. In higher education, students pay nothing under a department license. If the department prefers, students can buy their own access or a licensed title with a code from the campus bookstore.

No. Starting prices are published. Create a free account, enter your sections or students, and you generate your own quote inside Alps in seconds. Turn it into an invoice and pay by ACH, check, or wire. Your features unlock as soon as the invoice is issued, and you have 30 days to pay. You don’t have to fill out a form or book a call. Sales gets involved only for larger deployments, where implementation and contract terms vary.

You can price and buy a District License yourself inside Alps, with no sales call. For a Campus License, a larger deployment, implementation support, professional development, or custom contract terms, email sales@alps.2sigma.us, and we’ll quote you directly.

Publisher titles are licensed separately, per student, usually at or below the price of the print or e-book edition. Open content is free on every plan, forever. That covers most of what’s taught in intro computer science. It also includes several titles by 2Sigma School, such as Generative AI: Programming with LLMs, Logic Gym, and Nifty Assignments. In K-12, you buy licensed titles inside Alps for the students in your sections, on the same invoice as your subscription. In higher education, your bookstore can email sales@alps.2sigma.us to buy redemption codes in bulk and hand them out to students.

You pay whichever is greater: the total for your sections or students, or the plan minimum. Each section or student you add costs less than the one before, and adding one never causes a price jump. Each plan’s minimum, and how much it covers, is on the Pricing page.

In K-12, usually nothing changes. We price by class-size range, so a few students joining or leaving normally won’t change your price. If a class grows into the next range, generate a new quote with the new numbers and pay the difference, which is usually small.

If you add a whole new section, re-quote your entire subscription, including your existing sections. More sections lower the cost of each one, so the better rate applies to all of them and you pay only the difference.

In higher education, enrollment is counted once per term. Either way, we never re-price a term you’ve already paid for, and we don’t recalculate your bill at the end of the year.

No. Prices don’t include sales tax, VAT, or GST. Most public schools and districts are tax-exempt. If yours is, upload your exemption certificate in your billing settings.

Schools outside the US are billed in US dollars. You’ll see your exact rate in the quote you generate in Alps, before you pay anything.

Tell us about the book, and our team handles the import. We work from your source files instead of the printed edition. Your exercises become activities that grade themselves, and your text becomes readings. We add solutions, tests, and extra practice where they help. Anything we generated is labeled as ours, so readers can always tell it apart from your work.

You do. Alps doesn’t claim ownership of your book. In each exercise’s hints and solution, content from your book is marked as the author’s, and anything Alps writes is labeled as ours.

Per student, on a quote and invoice paid by ACH, check, or wire. In K-12, the school always pays. In higher education, a department can pay, or students can unlock the title with an access code from the campus bookstore. See how buying works.

It depends on your files. A book already marked up for the web moves faster than one we have to convert first. We’ll give you a date once we’ve seen them.

Yes. Open textbooks are free on every Alps plan, including the free one. There’s no trial period, no upgrade prompt, and no seat count.

When you publish a correction or a new edition, tell us and we’ll bring it in. Classes get the corrected edition, and any chapters you dropped are removed from the table of contents.

Yes. A class can combine your title with open textbooks and the school’s own material, and show each section only the units it needs. Students see one table of contents. Mixing books is included in the free plan. A licensed title needs an active license, and a district’s own course is something we plan with you and price before we start. See the multi-curriculum classroom.

Yes. We bring your own curriculum in for you. We plan the work with you and price it first, and we can keep it private to your district. Teachers can also turn their own materials into activities with Custom Activities, even pasting a whole worksheet or exam at once.

Only books that aren’t open source need a license. These are usually commercial textbooks from our partner publishers. On the bookshelf, licensed books are marked with a icon, and open-source books show a icon. All open-source books on Alps are free to use.

Prices vary by title and are usually at or below the price of the print or e-book edition. You need one license for each student who uses the book. To see the exact price, open the title in the Library and click Purchase License to build a quote for your school. No email or sales call needed.

It’s self-serve. Everything opens as soon as the invoice is issued, and you have 30 days to pay, so your students don’t have to wait for it to clear. (1) Open the title in the Library and click Purchase License to build a quote for your school. (2) Confirm your classes and, for a more accurate price, how many students are in each. (3) Click Get invoice on the quote. (4) Pay by ACH bank transfer (preferred), check, or wire, using the remit details and W-9 on the invoice. Then click Mark paid and add your payment reference.

It depends on the kind of school. In K-12, the school always pays. Alps never bills a K-12 student. In higher education, you choose. The department can buy for the whole class, students can buy their own access, or both. You set this on the quote when you buy. When students pay, each one unlocks access on their Course Access page by redeeming a code from the campus bookstore. The professor doesn’t have to handle any of it.

Yes, as long as the licensed teacher is part of the course section and there are enough licenses for every student enrolled in it. Each student needs their own license, no matter which teacher is teaching them.

Email sales@alps.2sigma.us with the title and quantity, and we’ll send a bulk quote and an invoice. Once it’s paid, you get that many redemption codes to sell like any other access code. Students redeem a code (like 4K2M-99XT-QW7R) on their Course Access page in Alps, and the title unlocks right away. No card needed.

We’d love to help. Introduce us to your publisher by emailing sales@alps.2sigma.us. We’ll work with them to turn their book into an interactive, adaptive edition on Alps.

A practice computer that exists only in the student’s browser tab. It has files and folders, user accounts and groups, file permissions, a small network with firewall rules, and saved network recordings. Students explore and change it by typing commands, the way they would on a real machine. Nothing they do there can damage anything.

Each exercise opens its own machine, with the accounts, permissions, files, and recordings the question needs already in place.

Nothing. There are no virtual machines to build, no lab images to maintain, no cloud accounts to set up, and no per-student licenses to buy. The range is ready when a student opens the activity, and it works the same on a Chromebook, an iPad, or a laptop.

Yes. The range can’t reach the internet or anything on your school network, and it exists only in the browser tab. Students can try something risky, get it wrong, and put the machine back the way it started with Reset scenario. Each exercise has its own machine in the student’s own browser. No one can affect anyone else’s work, or their own work on a different question.

Every command a student runs is saved, in order, in a Script beside the terminal. That includes the commands the machine refused, so you can see what a student tried. Check the machine grades the machine as it is now, with one row per requirement. Students can check as often as they like and see exactly which requirements aren’t met yet.

Yes. Everything runs in the browser, so managed Chromebooks work fully, with no admin rights, installs, or special network access needed. There’s no server for you to run.

No. The range is emulated. It models a Linux-like machine instead of running one, so it doesn’t do everything Linux does. There are no running programs to start or stop, no text editors like vi or nano, no internet access, and no sudo or root account. The shell takes one command per line, with no pipes or loops.

It covers most of what an introductory cybersecurity course asks students to do. That includes reading and setting file permissions, ownership, and groups, moving around a filesystem, searching inside files, and switching between accounts. Students can also read firewall rules and check whether traffic is allowed, examine saved packet captures, and work with keys, signatures, and encrypted files. If a student types a command the range doesn’t have, it tells them and suggests what to use instead.

Process Insights let you replay how a student wrote their code. Alps records how their file changes as they work, so you can watch the solution take shape. It also points out what’s worth your attention: where they got stuck, which lines they kept reworking, and whether they worked steadily or in one long sitting.

Three kinds of moments. Kept hitting the same error: the same failure came back run after run. Working code stopped working: a later change broke something that passed earlier. Pasted-in code: a large block arrived in one paste from outside Alps. Copying from the Alps textbook counts as normal work and isn’t flagged. Most students have no flags at all, and that’s normal.

No. A detector guesses and gives you a probability, and it can flag honest students. Alps doesn’t guess. It shows you what was recorded, including when a block of text arrived in one paste, and leaves the judgment to you. It never accuses a student or changes a grade. If part of a session wasn’t recorded, you see a gap there.

It’s meant to save you time. Alps stays quiet unless something stands out, then points you to the couple of minutes worth watching. If an observation isn’t useful, say so on the card. It drops to the bottom, and what Alps shows you gets better over time.

Students can replay their own work, which helps when something worked earlier and now doesn’t. They never see observations. Those are for the teacher, and they never block or change grading.

The free editors are wonderful places to build. Alps adds what a class needs around them: a ready project course with rubrics and reference solutions, sign-in with the school account students already use, assignments with due dates, every save kept to replay or restore, a live view of who is working, and grading beside each running project, with grades going to the Gradebook and your LMS. Students can still build freely in their own Sandbox.

Programs students build by snapping blocks together, in one of two editors that run inside Alps: Snap!, or AlpsBlocks, which is built on the open-source Scratch editor. A project can sit on a page of a textbook or in coursework you assign. Students play it, look inside, build it, and submit it, and you grade it beside the running project.

A project course in two editions, one for Snap! (66 projects across 15 units) and one for AlpsBlocks (53 projects across 14 units), each with short how-to guides. Students make games, art, music and stories, from a first animation to recursion. Most projects come with a rubric and a reference solution.

Open a student’s project and it runs, read-only, with the Grade panel beside it. Click a level for each criterion of the rubric and the total updates as you go. Save a draft, or click Publish & next to show the student their score and open the next student’s project. Projects without a rubric take a score and a comment.

Yes. In Create Activity, choose Block Project and pick Snap! or AlpsBlocks. Write the instructions, build the starting project in the editor, and add requirements students see checked off as they work, prediction questions, and a reference solution. You can change it later and publish a new version, and students who have started keep their work.

AlpsBlocks feels familiar to students who learned with the Scratch editor, so they can start building right away. Snap! goes further: students build blocks that report values, and use recursion and map and keep over lists. Joy of Computing comes in both, so you can choose by your students.

Yes, in AlpsBlocks. When you build a Block Project or a class’s starter, you can open a Scratch 3 project file (.sb3). Students work inside Alps rather than on a public website, with no separate account and no public gallery.

Projects save every 15 seconds while something has changed, and every save is kept in History. You or the student can play the versions back, compare any two, and restore an earlier one. Restoring adds it as the newest version and never removes anything.

Who in your class is working, reading or stopped in Alps, over the last 15 minutes to 3 hours, and what each student is working on. Students who have stalled are flagged and listed in Needs attention. Switch to Items to see where the class is stuck, or look back at a past class or the last 7 or 30 days.

After no activity in Alps for more than 5 minutes, or after opening a question and saving nothing for more than 10 minutes. You can change either number for each class. Flags describe a moment, not the student, and clear on their own.

Yes. Turn on Projector view first: names, pictures, flags and hint counts are hidden, and the tiles are shuffled, so nobody is singled out.

No. Live Activity shows activity in Alps: working, reading, saves and runs. A student reading a printed handout can look like one who stepped away. Use it to decide where to look, and the Gradebook and mastery to see what they learned.

Yes. Students can open a page that lists exactly what Live Activity shows their teacher about them.

Six summary cards above the Gradebook: the class average, students below 60%, missing work, work waiting for you to grade, the hardest coursework on the page, and students to check in with. Most cards show you just those students in one click. Under the grid, every coursework shows its median, its range and how many are missing.

Slipping: with six scores or more, the last three average at least 10 points below the earlier ones. Stuck: time spent is at least 1.4 times the class median and the overall score is under 65%. Hover a pill for the numbers behind it.

Missing work counts as 0 in a student’s overall score. Practice a student did without being assigned it is shown hatched and left out of the total until you assign it, which you can do right from the grid.

Yes. Sync to LMS sends the grades and updates any already sent. A grade waiting for your review is held back until you have looked at it, and practice nobody assigned is never sent.

Click Hide names first. Students then read as Student 1, Student 2 and so on, in roster order.

For one assignment: the wrong answers and Code errors many students share, who is not yet correct or still stuck, who may be clicking through multiple choice, and which activities to revisit and why. Find it on the assignment’s Activities and Common mistakes tabs, and in each activity’s Class Analysis.

A student got a multiple-choice or true/false question right only after retries, each within 3 seconds of the one before, and a bolt marks them. It’s a hint, not a verdict: plenty of quick retries are honest, so the suggested next step is to ask one to explain their answer. Parsons and fill-in-the-blank retries are never marked.

When at least 3 students gave the same wrong answer first and they are at least a fifth of those whose first answer is known, or when at least 3 picked it first and it beat the right answer. A Code error counts when at least 3 students met it.

The section’s teachers, your school’s Alps admins and Alps staff can see it; students and teaching assistants can’t. Class views show answers, counts, error names and student names. A student’s code shows only when you open their Work history, and opening it is logged.

Alps updates them on its own, normally within about 20 minutes of new work, and shows the time they stand at. To see who is working during class, use Live Activity.