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Class Companion Help Center

Select your preferred option as a starting point for your assignment

Class Companion enables you to create versatile assignments for any scenario.

How do I create an assignment?

We support 3 assignment formats which can be mixed: 

 - Each assignment consists of one or more questions. You can use built-in rubrics (e.g., SAQ, FRQ) or create your own.

 - We accept typed and handwritten essays. Handwritten essays still offer instant feedback since we use AI to convert the image to text. You can use built-in rubrics (e.g., LEQ, DBQ) or create your own. 

 - Students will see the correct and incorrect answers after submitting, along with feedback about why their selection is incorrect or praise for choosing the correct option.

 submission setting. With ordered assignments, the AI will walk students through the questions one at a time.

, remember that you may have an assignment that approximates one of these formats. For example, concept application or SCOTUS comparison from the AP US Gov & Pol are essentially short answer. We recommend starting with short answer if you're creating your own assignment.

Short answer, essay, and multiple choice can be mixed and matched.

Which assignment formats does Class Companion support?

 as shown in the above screenshot. Class Companion supports any JPG, PNG, or PDF attachments in a question.

Currently the AI relies on the image caption to know what is happening in the image, chart, or graph. So be sure to 

include a detailed caption for each image

 in order for the AI to include the image's context when providing feedback.

Learn more about adding charts, graphs, and other images to your assignment.

How do I include an image in my assignment?

When students submit their essays, they will be asked to upload a PDF, JPG, or PNG


Most students are able to take photos of their essays using a smartphone. If a student does not have a smartphone, you can help them scan the essay at school.

You can allow your students to upload handwritten essays.

How do I add handwritten essay assignments?

If most of the students in your class are having an issue, check out 

On occasion, the AI may get stuck while one of your students is trying to submit a response to an assignment. If trying again isn't working, you can reset their submission to unstick them.

Resetting your student's submission will erase their responses so you may want to let them know to copy their answers first.

 page for your class from the top nav links

Reset your student's submission if they get stuck

Why can't my student submit their response?

For assignments with handwritten submission type, you can upload your answers as PNGs, JPEGs or PDFs. However, we only support single-file upload at this time.

In order to submit multipage assignments, you can use your laptop, phone, or tablet to combine the pages into one PDF file.

How do I submit multiple pages for handwritten assignments?

Before an assignment has any submissions, you can edit all aspects of the assignment.

Click on the title of one of your classes

Click the assignment table row you'd like to edit or 

Once an assignment receives submissions, some edits are restricted. This is to avoid breaking the display of existing submissions (e.g. more or less questions, a different rubric, etc.). In this situation, we instead create a cloned assignment which can be edited freely.

 for each of your students to enable fully editing the original assignment.

If you are editing an assignment because the initial version students responded to had issues, after creating the new cloned assignment with your fixes, we encourage you to also close the old problematic assignment so students don't get confused seeing two assignments with the same name.

After receiving submissions, assignment edits are restricted.

How do I update an assignment?

Often times, this indicates a problem with the assignment or associated rubric. As a teacher, you can ensure an assignment is working correctly by previewing the assignment before publishing.

Ensure you include question-specific criteria in the 

 section (shown in the screenshot) and NOT in the rubric itself. Per-question criteria in the rubric will confuse the AI. You'll know this is the case if you see the "Invalid assignment rubric" error while previewing the assignment.

You can test that your custom rubric is working by previewing the assignment and successfully receiving feedback on a question.

Another way the AI can get confused is by including question numbering (e.g. 

, etc.) in the question, intro, or other parts of the assignment. We encourage you to rely on the automatically generated question numbering and reference context with words rather than numbers or letters.

Currently the AI cannot access content from a webpage through a link. You can, however, download the content (even by saving the webpage as a PDF) and upload it to the AI Context section of the assignment edit page. 

Learn more about correcting an assignment with issues

In the rare case of a website outage, you will find that you're unable to perform most tasks on the website. This can happen from a school IT firewall setting, so one simple test is trying to access 

 from a network different than the school (e.g. hotspotting using your phone data).

If you are still seeing errors after following these troubleshooting steps, please do not hesitate to 

, and if possible include details such as the assignment name and email of an affected student so our team can investigate the issue further.

Why can't most of my students submit their responses?

The underlying AI models Class Companion uses are based on 

. While GPT-4 is the most advanced Large Language Model currently available, there is still variability in the responses. This is the core reason Class Companion cannot ensure perfect consistency.

To contrast with non-AI alternatives, this is somewhat similar to how two different human graders may not provide the exact same feedback. Even a single grader may have variability in scores and feedback if they were to evaluate complex criteria on the same essay months apart.

We do, however, strive for high quality feedback with each submission, and if you're seeing major differences in how the AI graded the same criteria, we would love if you could share your particular examples so we could train the AI to avoid such mistakes. To do so, please 

 and include the assignment name, student, and the rubric.

Why does submitting the same answer sometimes result in different scores?

On occasion, your student's assignment may get stuck 

 if the AI does not properly identify their final submission as an attempt at the question. In this scenario you can easily mark their assignment as 

Click Actions on the right side of appropriate table row

If your student's assignment is stuck on In Progress you can easily mark it as complete

How do I mark my student's assignment as Complete?

Students are flagged for pasting text when they use their keyboard or mouse to paste text into the response field, with the following exceptions:

They copied some or all of one of their prior responses to the question

They copied some or all of the question itself

Learn when students are flagged for pasting text

How is pasted text calculated?

On the free teacher plan, you can import the following from 

On the Premium school or district plan, you can import the following from 

Grades can also be synced back to your LMS from Class Companion.

Class Companion syncs with Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom, and Clever on a paid plan

Does Class Companion sync with my LMS?

Class Companion offers multiple tools to help teacher detect cheating:

📋 Pasted text that a student pasted into their response - 

⌨️ Typing time of the student (paid feature)

💨 Number of times a student copied and left the tab (paid feature)

💬 Response similarity matches with other students (paid feature).

These tools equip teachers to detect plagiarism and AI generated text. Check out our 

Can Class Companion detect AI generated text?

Class Companion offers AI-generated insights about your students' strengths and weaknesses, along with their:

Percentage of assignments they tried again

Percentage of disputes that were settled in their favor

, you can see additional reports including a student's progress over time.

Click on the student's row in the table of students

Click on the class you'd like to view insights for

Note: Students must have completed at least one assignment in order to have insights. 

These insights are all visible to your students

 in their Class Companion class dashboard.

View analytics and insights about your student and class

How do I see reports about my student's progress?

After you close an assignment, you can still re-open it to allow additional submissions.  Simply follow these steps:

Go to your Assignments table within the class

Select Actions on the right side of the assignment row

After completing the above steps, your students will be able to see and complete the assignment if they haven't already completed it.

How do I re-open an assignment?

Outlines are useful for teaching structured thinking and writing fundamentals. Students may be able to complete multiple outlines in the same amount of time that is needed to write one complete essay. Thus, outlining is a way to get more reps with essay writing.

You can replicate an outline assignment in Class Companion like so:

 for the question-specific criteria like this for the evidence. 

 submission setting. With ordered assignments, the AI will walk students through the questions one at a time. 

Add short answer questions for each step then set the submission setting to Ordered

How do I create an outline assignment?

You might encounter a "Message Out of Sync" error while using our platform. This error occurs when the messages between your device and our servers don't match up correctly. Although it might be a bit inconvenient, this feature is actually a safeguard designed to ensure the integrity of your messages. Without it, you could experience more severe issues, such as duplicate messages, messages appearing in the wrong order, or incorrect grading. By preventing these more serious problems, this feature helps us maintain a smooth and reliable experience for all users.

There are a few common reasons why your messages might get out of sync:

: If your internet connection is unstable, it can cause a delay or disruption in communication between your device and our servers.

: Opening the same submission in multiple tabs or reloading the page while feedback is being generated can cause a mismatch.

: Occasionally, an update might fail or not properly register, causing the messages to fall out of sync.

The good news is that fixing this issue is usually very simple. In most cases, reloading the page will resolve the problem. This works 99.9% of the time.

: Simply refresh your browser. This action will usually sync everything back up.

: Ensure that you have a stable internet connection to prevent future issues.

: Try to avoid opening the same submission in multiple tabs or reloading the page while feedback is being generated.

By following these steps, you can quickly get back to your work without any further interruptions.

If you continue to experience issues or have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact our support team.

Why is my student getting a "Messages Out of Sync" Error?

At Class Companion, we believe that every student deserves the opportunity to learn effectively, regardless of their individual needs. Our platform is equipped with a variety of accessibility features, including text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and translation tools. These features are designed to support diverse learning styles and make education more inclusive. Here's how students can use them:

Text-to-speech is a powerful tool that reads written content aloud. It can be particularly helpful for students with reading difficulties, visual impairments, or those who simply prefer auditory learning.

, go to the class the student is in, select Students from the nav menu at the top of the page, click on the student's row in the table, then select Settings 

 Within your assignment, go to the Submission Settings tab on the left and scroll down to the Accommodations. Ensure these settings are not disabled like so: 

 Students can now click the speaker icon to to play or pause questions, sources, AI feedback, and AI tutor messages as needed. They can even listen to translated text in a different language! 🚀

Speech-to-text helps students convert their spoken words into written text. This is ideal for those who struggle with typing or have motor impairments, as well as for students who prefer to speak their ideas aloud.

 Follow the same steps as Text-to-speech.

 Students can now click the microphone icon within their textbox to record their voice for either a response or message to the AI tutor. When the microphone is active, speak clearly and at a steady pace. The platform will transcribe their speech into text in real time. Once the text is generated, you can edit it for accuracy. The platform's voice recognition is quite advanced, but it may occasionally require adjustments.

 To insert punctuation, simply say the name of the punctuation mark (e.g., “period,” “comma,” “question mark”).

Our translation features are designed to help students who are non-native speakers of the language used in their coursework. These tools can translate text from one language to another, making it easier to understand the material.

 Students will see a translation icon appear beneath questions, sources, AI feedback, and AI tutor messages. The first time they click the icon, they'll be prompted to choose the language they want to translate the text into. They can click the icon again to easily switch between the original and translated text to compare and better understand the content.

Accessibility features on ClassCompanion.com are here to support your learning journey. Whether you need help reading, writing, or understanding content, these tools are designed to make your educational experience more accessible and enjoyable. Give them a try and discover how they can enhance your learning!

Enable text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and translation for your students

How do students use accommodations/accessibility features?

 from the assignment table row Actions menu or from the top right of the assignment edit page.

When the dialog opens, you'll be prompted to select the classes you'd like to change the publish settings for

 to see the dates you can change for each class

Upon setting the Schedule, Due, and/or Close dates for each class, click 

Your students will be able to see an assignment after the Schedule date for a published assignment. They will no longer see the assignment after the Close date.

Select Publish or Change publish settings

How do I change the schedule, due, or close dates on an assignment?

You can easily add an assignment to another class and configure the dates for each class, too. Depending on the status of your assignment, here's how.

 menu or from the top right of the assignment edit page

After completing the above step (dependent on the state of your assignment), continue on with the following steps:

When the dialog opens, you'll be prompted to select the classes you'd like to assign to

How do I add or assign an assignment to another class?

Select the gavel icon next to the score you would like to override.

Set your final score and provide a comment as to why the student deserved this score.

Settling student disputes and overriding scores

How do I adjust or overrule scores?

Start editing the specific assignment you want to disable ditto on.

How do I disable ditto the AI tutor on an assessment?

If you're trying to use the microphone button to dictate your response (for the Overrule reason, for example), you'll need to enable microphone access on your browser.

If you don't see the above prompt, click the filter icon button to the left of the URL

Click Microphone to ensure the toggle is on

Reload the page and you should be able to dictate your response!

Why can't I dictate using the microphone button?

If you receive an "Unexpected error" message while trying to publish an assignment, this is likely because the questions or rubric are confusing the AI.

First, check to make sure you only have one question in each question block. For example:

Question 1
Answer both parts:
a) Identify one innovation...
b) Explain one way in which...

If you make this fix and publishing still doesn't work, check your rubric. Look for anything that may confuse the AI. 

Learn why you may be receiving an Unexpected error trying to publish