Exercises, problem sets, tests and exams should be more about competences rather than about just knowledge. And should be fun, and instructive. They should also allow for auto-assessment and promote autonomous learning. The verification of knowledge and work done might be a need of society (that we are also going to serve), but we mainly treat it as a means of learning and getting truly involved in subjects and communities. You can be reassuered that our tools will allow to produce useful evaluations and marks for your students: our first case study is how to manage the Operations Research exam by the University of Verona (now with the CoVid emergency). However, we started this project one full year before this emergency came about. We wanted to offer a fun and stimulating interface for the learners to prove others and themselves they were getting into the subject and pick up the deep methodology rather than just scratching the surface.

In the design of most of our problems and exercises, we pay uttermost attention to YES and NO certificates. To us, this is not just a prerequisite for the technical feasibility of secure and spoil-less verification, but is actually part of our didactic approach and of the methodology that is is our ambition to transmit. The student (the problem solver, in our jargon) plays the role of Merlin wizard, while the checkers written by the instructor (the problem maker) play the role of king Arthur. In this way, though the correctness of the solutions (both YES and NO certificates) can be verified by codes which provide support and help delivered on the spot, and interactive feedback, still this dialogue never spoils the challenge and the didactic experience offered by the exercise. We also believe this approach is the didactically correct one if we want to pass students the fire of autonomous exploration on the problems and of the subjects, and the proper methodology. Whether you are investigating as a scientist, or working for a firm, or in a project, the correct methodology is actually the same. Merlin wizard solving a problem truly works not for proving he has studied his chapter in the book but for getting a new result, or an understanding, or a product, which can be delivered, tested, verified, implemented by his boss king Arthur. Being tested on these exercises, the students, surprised and even confused at first, then come to life and absorb the sound methodology of working with certificates. It has great value to become aware of the proper way to communicate with others, and it has something in common with the correct way to face with open problems and conduct autonomous investigations. The adoption of a methodology based on certificates is what gives you a dialectic boost whatever is your boss (a firm, the society, a subject, an open problem to be attacked, a long journey within yourself). System engineers might regard society as a cloud of interacting boxes. For sure, the complexity of this cloud is growing and some boxes find it hard to interact properly. Each box should know how to be part of the whole and preserve life inside and outside itself. This is an education but not only priority.

The project is open to whoever is interested in contributing. There are several ways you can contribute, you might even just be interested in help in setting up the technical part for problems that could be neat to have in your teaching.

Here follows a list of people who has contributed.

Romeo Rizzi. I teach a few classes in Verona where I am leading motivated students on these ambitious projects. This project could not have been possible without them. I come from Combinatorial Optimization and Algorithms, two fields that have prompted the birth of Computational Complexity theory, and where this theory has payed huge dividends as a muse and as a lively factory of evergreen methodology. I also come from 20 years of experience in training students for the Olympiads in Informatics, where automatic verification systems are part of the game and you have the privilege to work with self-motivated students. This background has determined my vision and approach.
There is no need I leave you my contacts here since they are very easy to get from the web.

Francesco Trotti.

Marco Crosara.

Alessandro Busatto.

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insomma, la lista di chi ci stà lavorando o ci ha lavorato in passato, spiegando un minimo sul ruolo/contributo.