Runestone
Runestone is an open-source e-learning platform for writing interactive textbooks in Python. It allows authors to create web-based course content with assignments, visualizations, active code, and more to teach programming.
elearning
textbooks
python
interactive
assignments
visualizations
active-code
Runestone: Open-Source E-Learning Platform
An open-source e-learning platform for creating interactive textbooks in Python, featuring assignments, visualizations, active code, and more.
What is Runestone?
Runestone is an open-source e-learning platform designed specifically for writing interactive textbooks to teach programming and computer science concepts. It provides a suite of tools for authors to create web-based course content with features like:
- In-browser coding exercises and active code blocks
- Multiple choice, fill in the blank, clickable area, drag and drop, and parsons puzzle assessments
- Videos, animations, and other rich media
- Social learning features like forums and peer instruction tools
- Analytics to track student progress and engagement
The Runestone framework is written in Python and outputs HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that can be hosted on any web server. It offers a low barrier to entry for educators to create interactive courses that go beyond static textbooks. Everything is open-source and customizable under the MIT license.
Some key advantages of Runestone include the wide range of built-in assessments, ability to gracefully introduce complex concepts with interactivity, integrated practice exercises, and reporting features. It has an active developer community adding new features and components as well.
Runestone Features
Features
- Interactive textbooks
- Visualizations
- Active code exercises
- Multiple choice questions
- Fill in the blank questions
- Timed exams
- Videos
- Drag and drop
Pricing
- Open Source
- Free
Pros
Open source
Free to use
Good for teaching programming
Highly customizable
Cons
Steep learning curve
Limited documentation
Not as full featured as some commercial platforms
Official Links
The Best Runestone Alternatives
Top Education & Reference and Programming and other similar apps like Runestone
Here are some alternatives to Runestone:
Suggest an alternative ❐
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is a source code editor developed by Microsoft that includes support for debugging, embedded Git control, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, and code refactoring. It's free, open-source, and available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.As a lightweight but powerful code editor, VS Code gives developers a fast...
Neovim
Neovim is a hyperextensible Vim-based text editor developed since 2014. It is a rewrite and refactoring of Vim to allow for greater plugin/extension development. Neovim offers the core functionality of Vim - the keybindings, editing modes, configuration options that users are familiar with - just with a more streamlined codebase...
Sublime Text
Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, markup, and prose. It has a clean, intuitive, and unobtrusive user interface with excellent performance. Sublime Text is highly customizable and extensible with Python plugins. Key features include:Fast, lightweight, and responsive user interfaceCross-platform availability for Linux, Windows, and macOSPowerful search and...
VSCodium
VSCodium is an open source, community-driven alternative to Microsoft's popular Visual Studio Code editor. It is based on the same codebase as Visual Studio Code, but stripped of any Microsoft branding, telemetry or tracking. Just like VS Code, VSCodium is a free, cross-platform source code editor with support for debugging,...
Notepad++
Notepad++ is a popular open-source text and source code editor for Windows. It supports a wide variety of programming languages and markup languages with syntax highlighting, code folding, macro abilities and more. Some key features of Notepad++ include:Syntax highlighting for over 100 programming languages like C++, Java, HTML, XML and...
PhpStorm
PhpStorm is a feature-rich integrated development environment (IDE) made specifically for PHP development by JetBrains. It has extensive support and features for modern PHP frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, Zend etc. and popular CMS platforms like WordPress, Drupal, Magento.Key features of PhpStorm include:Intelligent PHP code completion, navigation and refactoring toolsBuilt-in debugger...
Eclipse
Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment (IDE) and an extensible plug-in system. It is written mostly in Java and can be used to develop applications in Java and other programming languages including C/C++, Python, PHP, and more.Some key features of Eclipse include:Code editors with...
Kate
Kate is a free and open-source text editor that provides advanced features for programmers and developers. It is available on Linux, UNIX, Windows and macOS platforms.Some key features of Kate include:Syntax highlighting for over 200 file formats including C, C++, Java, HTML, XML, PHP, JavaScript, Perl and moreCode folding and...
GNU Emacs
GNU Emacs is a powerful, customizable, open source text editor and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing. This extensibility allows Emacs to provide far more than your average text editor.Beyond text editing, Emacs...
RubyMine
RubyMine is a cross-platform IDE developed by JetBrains aimed at Ruby and Ruby on Rails developers. It includes a wide range of features designed to increase developer productivity by providing intelligent code completion, on-the-fly code analysis, advanced navigation, and refactoring tools.Some of the key features of RubyMine include:Smart code editor...
Lite XL
Lite XL is an open-source, lightweight text editor and IDE aimed at software developers. It provides a minimalist and customizable interface along with features you'd expect in a code editor, like:Syntax highlighting for over 100 languagesCode completion and lintingSplit window editingPlugin support for extending functionalityProject-based workspace for managing filesIntegrated terminalGit...
CSSEdit
CSSEdit is a feature-packed text editor designed specifically for web developers and web designers. It provides a streamlined interface and robust set of tools to make coding CSS, HTML, JavaScript faster and easier.Some key features of CSSEdit include:Syntax highlighting - Code is color-coded to improve readabiity and quickly identify errors.Code...
