Teaching LaTeX to 150 Students: What Breaks, What Works
I speak to Computer Science professors every week. The story is always the same: they love LaTeX for its precision, but they hate teaching it.
The problem isn't the syntax. The problem is the logistics.
The "Single-Player" Trap
Tools like Overleaf are design miracles for the individual researcher. They are optimized for 3-4 people writing a paper. But when you apply that same model to an "Introduction to Algorithms" course with 150 freshmen, the friction multiplies.
The Friction Points
- The Invitation Pile: 150 students each sharing a project with you is 150 invitations to keep track of, and more when every TA needs one too.
- Collaborator Caps: On a free plan that allows one collaborator per project, a student can add the professor or the TA, not both.
- Late Visibility: If students share their work only on submission day, a student stuck on Day 2 stays stuck until Day 7.
What LetX Does for a Course
LetX has no class dashboard and no roster tool: you open each student's project as any collaborator would. What it does have removes most of the friction above.
- Collaborators are free on every plan, Free included. Ask students to share their project with you and the TA in week one, not on the deadline. Editing is real time, so a shared project always shows its current state, and you can spot the student stuck on Day 2.
- Roles that fit teaching. Give a TA the Commenter role to leave notes beside the source without changing it, or Editor to fix things directly. Viewer is read-only.
- One link per assignment. Students start their own copy of an assignment template in one click. For your own assignment, put it in a public GitHub repository with an Open in LetX link, and each student who clicks it gets a copy in their own account.
- Seats only for the students who need them. Free includes 40 compiles a day, which covers most coursework. When some students need Pro for the term, a teacher can buy a Team, $20 per seat a month for 2 to 50 people, give the seats out, and take them back when the course ends. A Team has members, roles and an activity log. For more than 50 people there is an Institution plan, where people join with their university email. See pricing.
Why "It Works on My Machine" is Not an Excuse
In a local workflow, the first weeks of a course go on debugging TeX Live installations on student laptops. On LetX there is nothing to install: every build runs latexmk on the same full TeX Live on our build servers. If it compiles for the professor, it compiles for the student.
Founder's Note: We are not trying to kill Overleaf. We use it ourselves for papers. But for teaching, the logistics matter more than the editor, which is why collaborators on LetX are free on every plan. More on running a course: LaTeX for classes.
Shihab Shahriar Antor, Founder @ Shahriar Labs.
Frequently asked questions
Why is Overleaf hard to use in classrooms?
Overleaf's free tier limits collaborators and compile time, and paid licences for a whole class or department cost money, so a large course can hit a paywall mid-semester. Check Overleaf's current pricing, as its plans change.
What is a better Overleaf option for teaching?
LetX has unlimited collaborators on every plan, Free included, so a student can share a project with the teacher and every TA at no cost. When some students need Pro for the term, a teacher can buy Team seats for 2 to 50 people and give them out. Larger groups can use an Institution plan.
Do students need to install anything?
No. Browser-based LaTeX editors run the full TeX toolchain in the cloud, so students on any laptop or Chromebook can write and compile without installing TeX Live.
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Written by Shihab Shahriar Antor , AI Engineer & Founder of Shahriar Labs. Builder of LetX (collaborative LaTeX) and offSchool (SSC science and maths, learned through simulations).