Classla AI, the Teacher's Assistant

Open any assignment you can edit and press AI Assistant on the rail beside the editor. The panel docks to either side. It opens with "Ask me to help build your assignment. I can create, edit, and organize blocks."

Each conversation is saved with the assignment it was started on and is yours alone. A chat is named after your first message in it. The chat's name at the top of the panel opens a list of your chats on that assignment, where you can reopen one or delete it, and below them Chats elsewhere in this course: your chats on the course's other assignments and the course chat, each opening on its own page. New Chat starts over; opening the panel on an assignment you have not chatted on yet starts an empty chat there. While it is working, Stop ends the turn.

You can attach files with Attach file or by pasting: up to ten per message, images (JPEG, PNG, GIF or WebP, up to 20 MB each), PDFs up to 10 MB, and code or text files up to 500 KB. A photo of a worksheet or a PDF of last year's quiz is a good place to start.

To work on the whole course instead of one assignment, use Ask AI on the course's Summary page (below). There is also a smaller assistant inside your own Workspace that writes demo files before class. It has its own page: Workspace.

On a course's Summary page, Ask AI beside the join code opens the assistant for the whole course. It opens with "Ask me to plan and build your course." Ask it for a unit ("make Unit 4: a reading on arrays, a coding lab and a 10-question quiz"), or a change across the course ("split the midterm into Part 1 and Part 2", "move every Unit 2 due date a week later"). It shows its plan, then builds it, and ends with a link to each assignment it made or changed.

• Write or rewrite the Summary page itself: a welcome, a syllabus, links, or the week's plan. It reads the page first and keeps what you did not ask to change, and the page updates when it is done.
• Create assignments (standard, PDF, video or flashcard sets) in the course's folders, and write their questions and answer keys. A new assignment is always unpublished until you publish it.
• Split or reorganize assignments: it copies blocks from one assignment into another, and removes them from the original only when you ask.
• Change titles, settings, due dates and Closes dates, tags, the course defaults and the grading scheme across the course, with the same permissions and cards as in an assignment.
• It makes at most 10 new assignments per message. For more, send "continue" and it carries on.

It works only on that course and does not read student work: for a question about a student, open the assistant inside the assignment. It uses the course's memories but does not save new ones. A change to an assignment students have already started shows the same card as below. Each chat is yours alone, listed by the chat's name at the top of the panel, with your assignment chats under Chats elsewhere in this course. On a phone the panel opens full screen.

It works on the assignment you have open, and can read the rest of the course around it.

Write and Edit the Assignment

• Create blocks: multiple choice, short answer, fill-in-the-blank, headings and text, tables, callouts, File blocks that show a file from the course Files library, and the other block types.
• Change any existing block: its wording, its answers, its points and its block settings, and the text of a quote, the items of a checklist (ticks kept) and the code and language of a code block, each of which stays where it is. It can move a block or delete one, and edit the rubric.
• Copy blocks from another assignment in the course into this one, which is the quick way to a parallel version or a retake.
• Read the questions of another assignment in the course in full, their exact wording, every answer choice and the correct answers, without copying them, so it can write new questions in the same style (for example a quiz modelled on a Live Review).
• On a flashcard set, write cards from a topic or a reading, and edit, remove or reorder them. Students keep their progress on the cards it edits. Audio stays yours to record.
• Make a graded quiz from a flashcard set: multiple choice, fill in the blank or matching, created unpublished next to the set.
• Make a new, separate assignment without leaving this one: a review of what the class missed on this assessment, a follow-up practice set, or a part of this assignment split off (it can copy this assignment's blocks into it). It is created unpublished in the same folder with the course's default settings, built with answer keys, and the reply links to it. It never names a student in it, since students will read it: if its plan for the new assignment names a student of the course, it is stopped and writes it again without the name. After it has read student work in the chat, it asks you before creating it.

Subject blocks have their own pages. In a coding class it also writes starter and solution files and autograder tests, and runs the tests against the model solution or the starter code to check them (nothing is recorded or graded): Coding blocks. In a math class it writes math answers, graph questions and show your work questions: Math.

Change Settings and Course Setup

• The assignment's title, settings, due dates and Closes dates, including different dates for a section or one student. A Closes date must be in the future, and one that has already passed stays as it is, since moving it would reopen the assignment.
• Tags on the assignment, and new tags for the course.
• The course defaults for new blocks, new assignments and new live games. Existing blocks and assignments are left as they are unless you ask it to change them too.
• The course grading scheme: points or weighted categories, whether missing work counts as zero after its due date, and the weight of each category. Every course total is recalculated from the new scheme.
• The Google Classroom posting rules, and whether one assignment posts now or never.

It does this with your permissions, not more. A teaching assistant's chat can change only what that TA could change by hand, and course-wide changes (the defaults and the grading scheme) need an instructor of the course.

Look at Your Class's Work

• Find a student and read their submission, score and earlier attempts.
• Search the class's submitted code, compare two students, read the similarity report and summarise the paste trail.
• Read poll results and the results of a finished live game.
• Read the course Analytics overview: the class average, missing work, each student's standing with its reasons, and the hardest questions.
• Read how the class did on every question of an assignment: the share fully correct, the average, the most chosen wrong answer and answers waiting on grading, plus its autograder tests. Ask it what to re-teach after a quiz, then ask it to make a review assignment on those concepts.
• Narrow any of these numbers to one section by its name ("only 2A"), or leave students out of the averages ("without these two"). The reply says which section it counted and how many students it left out. Leaving students out applies only to that chat; the Analytics tab is unchanged.
• Read the Time and Activity views per student (time on each clock, the Long and low reading, last active, actions per day), or one student in depth: which assignments they are missing, each assignment's score and time, and when they were last active.
• Draft feedback for one student. The draft appears on a card, and nothing is saved until you press Save Feedback. Saving replaces what is already in that student's feedback box.

Look Things Up

• Answer a question or talk something through without changing anything.
• Search the web, or read a page when you paste a link.
• Answer how something in Classla works from these docs, with the link.
• Pass a problem or a feature request on to the Classla team when you ask it to, or when it keeps getting the same thing wrong. It tells you when it does, and files at most 20 a day for you.

Its changes appear in your open editor as it makes them. If you are typing at the same time, the two are merged block by block, and where you and the assistant changed the same block, your edit is the one kept.

Before the assistant's first change in a turn, Classla records the assignment as it was, and the turn's changes are recorded together. Open Version History on the rail to see them: the assistant's are marked AI, and you can restore any snapshot.

Its answers in the chat are formatted text, and math in them is drawn as math (fractions, exponents, symbols) rather than printed as code.

If it is about to change the content of an assignment students have already started, it stops and shows you a card headed "Students Have Already Started This Assignment", with the change described in plain words, and two buttons: Cancel and Yes, Make This Change. Content means blocks, starter files, autograder tests and the rubric; one yes covers the rest of that turn. The check runs on the server, not in the panel, and it fails closed: if it cannot tell, it asks. If you do not answer within five minutes, the change is not made.

Two more rules protect work students have already done:

• It will not quietly change the answer key of a question students have already answered. Wording, points, layout and Check Answer can still change; a new correct answer waits until you have approved it, because every answer already given would be regraded against it.
• It will not overwrite a whole file, test list or text block it has not read in the same turn, so an edit you made by hand a moment ago is not replaced by an older copy.

Once a conversation has read a student's work or a web page, it also asks before changing assignment settings or course setup, on a card headed "Confirm This Change". Memories from that conversation are saved as suggestions for you to approve in AI Memory.

The assistant remembers how you teach a course, so you do not explain it again in every chat. A memory is one short instruction, such as "Always use Python type hints" or what you mean by one of your own phrases. Memories belong to the course and are shared by every assignment in it. When you tell it something lasting ("always", "never", "from now on"), it saves a memory and shows a Remembered chip in the chat with an Undo link. In each reply a chip such as "Recalled 3 of 12 memories" shows which ones it used; click it for the list.

In Course Settings, under AI memory, is where you manage them:

Allow AI to save memories during chat (On for a new course)

The switch that lets the assistant save memories on its own.

Add a memory

Write one yourself, up to 500 characters. Tick Pin: keep in every conversation for something that must always apply, such as the course's language; the rest are recalled when the topic or the block being edited calls for them. You can also limit a memory to certain block types.

Suggested by the AI

Memories waiting for your approval, with the words they came from. Accept or Dismiss each one.

Memories that disagree

When a new memory contradicts an older one, both are shown here. Pick Keep this one or Keep both. Until you decide, the assistant follows the more specific one and mentions the disagreement.

Graph

Shows the same memories as a map, each linked to its topics and block types; click one to read, pin or edit it. List is the plain view.

Each memory can be pinned, edited or removed. Filter by Active, Suggested, Replaced, Archived or All, by block type, or with Search memories.

Printable PDF on the rail turns the assignment into a paper worksheet and an answer key. Press Create Paper Assignment with AI and it reads the assignment and writes both as US Letter PDFs. Each question gets a paper version: boxes to tick for multiple choice, ruled lines for a short answer, a blank work area for show your work, an empty grid for a graph, and a paper question (tracing or writing code) for a coding block. The answer key is the same worksheet with the correct choices and sample answers filled in.

The PDFs open in place of the editor. Switch between Student View and Answer Key, press Download to save one, and Return to Assignment to go back. To change something ("more space for question 3", "put it on two pages"), type it in the box under the chat, which reads "Request changes...". The PDFs and the conversation are kept with the assignment, so they are there when you come back; Start over deletes them and begins again.

A few blocks have an AI button of their own, separate from the chat. Each is explained on its subject's page: Create with AI for a model solution and Generate with AI for unit tests on a coding block (Coding blocks), and From a photo, which turns a photo of your worked solution to a show your work question into LaTeX (Graphs, proofs and handwritten work).

Each account has a weekly Classla AI allowance, shared by the chat and the AI buttons. It covers a lot of everyday use: building several assignments a day with follow-up requests fits well inside it. A bar at the top of Course settings → AI memory shows how much you have used this week. If you use it up, Classla AI says so and stops until the allowance resets on Monday. Everything it already made stays saved.

Ask, in the app's header, answers a question about Classla from these docs, and only these docs. Type it the way you would ask a colleague ("how do I let a student redo a quiz after it's graded?"). It reads all of the docs for every question, so a goal with no button of its own, like extra credit or a curve, gets the features that do it: the Score Modifier, or a rubric item marked Extra Credit (not counted in total). The answer is a few sentences with a numbered link after each claim, to the section of the docs it came from. When Classla cannot do something, it says so and names the closest thing it does. A question that is not about Classla gets the closest pages instead of an answer.

Who sees it:

• Ask is in the header on the dashboard and in courses you teach. It is hidden inside a course for its students and auditors, for managed student accounts, during a lockdown session and in the public demo.
• The written answer is for verified teachers. Any other account gets the closest pages, with "Written answers are for verified teachers."
• You can ask 30 questions in ten minutes. What you type is not written to Classla's logs.

The assistant and your own Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini read the same docs when you ask them how something in Classla works, so they give the same answer. Anything you type into Ask is sent to an AI model to write the answer, so keep student names out of it.

• There is no student assistant: no tutor, no hint button and no chat. That is a decision. The assistant helps the teacher help students and does not stand between them.
• It cannot grade. There is no tool that writes a score or a review status. Feedback it drafts is saved only when you press Save Feedback. Handwritten work is graded by you, by checking off rubric items; no AI grades it.
• It cannot publish, set an Opens date, delete an assignment, change who is enrolled, or run code. There is no tool for any of them, so those stay with you. Opens is left out on purpose: setting it would publish content to students that you may not have reviewed. It can set a Closes date, which only ends the time students have to work. That holds for Ask AI on the Summary page too. Ask AI on the Summary page can tell you what is in the course's recycle bin; restoring is your click.
• In an archived course it can read and answer, but every change to an assignment or a course setting is refused until an instructor unarchives it.
• A teaching assistant needs View Grades to read student work with it, and View Students as well, because those answers show names.
• It reads your class's work when you ask it about your class. That is how it answers a question about a student, so know that before you ask one. A student's name and work then go to the AI provider as part of the question.
• There is no switch that turns the assistant off for a course. It is on for verified teachers only, and students never see it. You can switch off its saved memory in Course Settings, under AI memory.
• Classla charges nothing for the assistant or for connecting your own Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini. Your own Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini plan is between you and that company, and what they read is handled under their own terms. Your own Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini sees student work only if you tick Read student work when you connect it; see Connect your own Claude, Connect your own ChatGPT and Connect your own Gemini.
• A printed worksheet does not change when you edit the assignment afterwards. Ask the Printable PDF chat to update it, or start over.
• The assistant, Printable PDF and the AI buttons are switched on for verified teachers. The panel still opens and tells you so rather than hiding: "The AI assistant is enabled for verified teachers. Email camden@classla.org and we will get you set up."

• Connect Your Own Claude to Classla
• Connect Your Own ChatGPT to Classla
• Connect Your Own Gemini to Classla
• Blocks: What an Assignment Is Made Of
• Assignment Settings
• Analytics and the Course Grade
• Grading in Classla