Instructions Tab not Popping Up

Problem description:
Student Repls are not showing the instructions tab that displays the instructions.md file. It is also unavailable to find when opening a new tab.

Expected behavior:
Instructions tab with rendered MD would display to students.

Actual behavior:
Nothing available.

Steps to reproduce:
Open a Repl as a student.

Bug appears at this link:
Any student Repl - cannot provide link since it requires specific student account linked to a Team.

Browser/OS/Device:
Chrome on various OSā€™s, Safari on MacOS.

Screenshot of tools section from student account:
image

Update: Random refreshes seems to make it show up for some students. Not all.

Hey @MrBrash!

Thank you for reporting. Do they see the instructions option when they open up a new tab?
image

Also, can the user scroll down the tools pane to see more options? Maybe itā€™s hidden lower in the list (in the screenshot you provided)

It wasnā€™t there as of this morning. At home it seems to be working in my fake student account. I will have students try it again tomorrow.
There has always been a delay between loading the Repl and having the Instructions available. Perhaps there is something on the school network that is an issue? Anyway, Iā€™ll have the students check tomorrow.

@ShaneAtReplit the issue persists for only a handful of my students. We have rebooted the device, cleared the cache, etc. A few are Chromebooks, two are Windows devices. All are in the Chrome browser. Of a class of about 26, I have about 6 students with the issue.

The plot thickens - when I open the Repls from those 6 students in the teacher account in Teams, I also do not get the instructions tab. But when I open another studentā€™s Repl who is getting the tab, I get it as well. So perhaps it is account related?

Here are some screenshots and a link to one student Repl with the issue:

image.png

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https://replit.com/@ics2o-s2-2223/RST-Part-2-Program-no-UnicornHAT-NolanChow1

Thanks for the info! I was able to confirm that the instructions are missing from the project you sent me (and for the other studentā€™s submissions as well).

I will flag this to the team and will follow up once I have an update.

@ShaneAtReplit Iā€™m experiencing the same problem. Here is a link to my project.

2 Likes

I also have a student with the same issue.

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My students are also experiencing this - seems to be affecting MacOS users but not Windows, but could be a coincidence?

Thank you all for the context! We will continue to look into this and I will post an update in the thread once we know more on the issue.

My students are having the same problem as well.

instructions.md not showing up. They tried creating a new account and re-joined the team but none of the accounts work.

Hey everyone!
Could you try what I have said in another post in the meantime?

Tutorials are all well and good but you canā€™t make edits to them after students have forked the assignment because the edits donā€™t propagate to the student copies. The instructions do. Letā€™s say I want to add an example or thereā€™s an unfortunate typo in my instructions.md file - if I edit mine, the edits show for the students. But the tutorials folder gets copied to student projects, meaning you canā€™t modify it. I mean you can for future, but not for the current students.

2 Likes

I believe this issue is a duplicate of: Instruction tab does not pops up automatically, not found under Tools for certain students

Here is my most recent response on that one:

Hey all!

I checked internally and the engineering team is aware of and is tracking this internally. That said, we cannot say for certain when weā€™ll see an update here, though. Thanks for your patience.

Any updates on this, because it has happened to us too. They were working fine before the summer break. They look right on teacher account, but not on student account. Then started randomly working for some students.

1 Like

All we know for sure (as of two days ago) is that the engineering team is aware of the issue.

Strange theory but could it somehow be an ad-blocker causing the issue? Because the Instructions tab gets loaded after the entire page, is there a chance that some ad-blocking techniques are seeing this as a false positive? I hadnā€™t thought about that until just now.

I am also seeing this issue. Hereā€™s a workaround that worked for me:
Within the repl, click on the ā€œā€¦ā€ in the upper right corner. In the search bar, type ā€œInstructionsā€, click on the Instructions option that appears.

More details:
MacOS Ventura version 13.2.1
Chrome Version 111.0.5563.64 (Official Build) (arm64)

Thanks - in my experiences with this issue (last school year), we could not find the instructions tab no matter what we tried. Including that method.

Thankfully Iā€™ve not run into the issue yet with my current classes.

My students are having the same issue. I tried using the three dot menu on the right top corner and it works if the student types it with a lowercase ā€œiā€ ā†’ instructions.md shows up. It shows them the file instead of the preview version though. So I have to tell them to click on the ā€˜eyeā€™ preview button on the tab so it can be displayed nice and neat.

Hey @RicardoSerrano3!

Can you please send me the link to the project that your students are having issues with? Also, are you and your students having the issue with the instructions tab, or just your students?