Unleashing the Power of Python at the University: 5 Automated Tasks You Can Tackle Today

As a student or staff member at a university, you’ve probably encountered more than your fair share of tedious, time-consuming tasks. From grading assignments to analyzing data to managing courses, there always seems to be something that could be automated to save you time and hassle. That’s where Python comes in.

Python is a powerful programming language that is well-suited for automating all kinds of tasks. In this article, we’ll look at five examples of how you might use Python to make your life at the university a little easier.

1. Grading scripts: If you’re a teacher or TA, you know how much time it can take to grade a stack of assignments. With Python, you can write a script that runs tests on student submissions and generates a report with the results. This can save you hours of tedious manual grading and allow you to focus on providing feedback to your students.

import os
import test_module

def grade_assignment(submission_folder):
  grades = {}
  for submission in os.listdir(submission_folder):
    student_id = submission.split('_')[0]
    result = test_module.run_tests(submission)
    grades[student_id] = result
  return grades

grades = grade_assignment('submissions')
print(grades)

1. Data analysis: Whether you’re working on a research project or just need to make sense of a large dataset, Python has a number of powerful libraries that can help. Pandas, for example, makes it easy to manipulate and visualize data, while NumPy provides support for numerical computing.

import pandas as pd

# Load data into a DataFrame
df = pd.read_csv('data.csv')

# Calculate summary statistics
mean = df['column_name'].mean()
median = df['column_name'].median()
mode = df['column_name'].mode()

# Visualize data with a histogram
df['column_name'].plot.hist()

1. Web scraping: Need to gather data from a website for a project or analysis? Python’s Beautiful Soup library makes it easy to extract specific data from web pages with just a few lines of code.

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# Make a request to the webpage
response = requests.get('http://www.example.com')

# Parse the HTML of the webpage
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser')

# Find specific elements on the page
elements = soup.find_all('p')

# Extract data from the elements
for element in elements:
  print(element.text)

1. Course management: From scheduling classes to enrolling students, there are plenty of tasks that can be automated in the realm of course management. With Python, you can write scripts to handle everything from generating transcripts to updating enrollment lists.

import csv

def enroll_student(student_id, course_id):
  with open('enrollments.csv', 'a') as csvfile:
    enrollment_writer = csv.writer(csvfile)
    enrollment_writer.writerow([student_id, course_id])

enroll_student('123456', 'CSC101')

1. Automating repetitive tasks: Whether you’re renaming a bunch of files or generating reports from multiple data sources, Python can help you automate tasks that would be tedious to do manually. With just a few lines of code, you can save yourself hours of frustration and free up your time for more important things.

import os

def rename_files(folder):
  for filename in os.listdir(folder):
    new_name = filename.replace('old_text', 'new_text')
    os.rename(os.path.join(folder, filename), os.path.join(folder, new_name))

rename_files('files')

So there you have it: five examples of how you might use Python to automate tasks at the university. Whether you’re a student or staff member, Python can help you work more efficiently and get more done in less time. Happy coding!