Creating an assignment
Every section of the New Assignment modal, paired with a visual of the field. Read down the left, glance right for the student-facing UI.
Title title
One short line. Name the assignment, don't describe it — "Essay 2 — close reading of Beloved" beats "Read Beloved and write a 500-word essay about how it uses imagery."
Students see the title in their dashboard list. Make it scannable.
Instructions instructions
Markdown supported — **bold**, _italic_, lists with - or 1., block quotes with >, links with [text](https://url). The student sees rendered HTML.
The Student preview panel updates live as you type. Use it before publishing.
Assignment type kind
Solo (default) — each student submits their own work.
Group — students collaborate on a shared doc. After save, Red Stet opens the group manager: assign students, optionally designate leads. Each group gets one shared doc with per-block authorship tracking. Provenance recordings stay per-student.
Publish & due dates publishAt · dueAt
Publish on — when the assignment becomes visible. Blank publishes immediately; a future date stages it.
Due — when work is expected. Students see "Due in 3 days." Past-due doesn't lock — students can still submit — but the visual changes to a warning chip.
Style preset stylePreset
Pre-configures the Consistency layer — the in-doc style guide that flags inconsistencies as the student writes (mixing "OK" and "Okay", "Internet" and "internet"). Options:
- Chicago — humanities default; serial comma, em-dashes
- AP — journalism; no serial comma, single quotes for headlines
- APA — social sciences; author-date citations
- MLA — literature; author-page citations
- None — student picks
Submission attempts maxAttempts
Cap on Submit clicks. Unlimited (default) for low-stakes, 1 for high-stakes finals, 2-3 for revision-and-resubmit.
Students see their counter. At the cap, Submit disables.
Attachments attachments
Files the student consults while working — PDF readings, source images, audio lectures. Three kinds, each previewed in the student panel:
- PDF — inline, scrollable
- Image — PNG, JPEG, WebP, rendered in the panel
- Audio — MP3, M4A, WAV, in a player
25 MB per file, 20 files per assignment. Pick files while you write; they upload when you save, with progress on each row. A file that fails stays in the list with the reason — save again to retry.
Video isn't accepted. Put lecture video behind a reference link.
Targets targets
Word count, page count, citations. Students see a live progress strip — "423 / 500-750 words" — and a citations checklist if you require any.
Guidance, not gates. A student can submit under the minimum. The strip turns green at the threshold; it never blocks submit.
Reference links referenceLinks
External URLs — a Wikipedia article, an MLA style guide, a JSTOR source. Each link gets a kind (article / video / audio / document / other) and an optional label.
Students see these as "Related materials" — separate from attachments, which are files you uploaded.
Tags tags
Free-form labels — essay, midterm, draft, q3-2026. Comma-separated.
Tags surface as filter chips in your classroom view and the cross-classroom list. Students don't see them.
Sub-tasks subTasks
Internal milestones — outline → draft → revise. Each carries a title, optional description, optional due date, optional weight.
Students see a checklist; teachers see per-task completion in the submissions list.
Still one submission — sub-tasks are metadata on it.
Rubric rubric
Dimensions you score against. Each criterion has a name (Argument, Evidence, Mechanics) and a one-line descriptor.
Fixed 4-level scale: Beginning · Developing · Proficient · Excellent. Pick a level per criterion after submit. The student sees the scored rubric.
Save reusable rubrics in the Rubric library on the left panel.
Classroom default rubric classrooms.defaultRubric
Set in the classroom's Defaults modal. New assignments open with the rubric editor pre-filled; per-assignment edits stay local.
Behaves like defaultStylePreset and defaultMaxAttempts — a starting point, not a constraint. Changing it doesn't touch past assignments.
Use when the same rubric runs across most of a class — Lit Argument with Argument · Evidence · Structure · Prose; Journalism with Voice · Sourcing · Clarity.
Self-assessment selfAssessmentPrompts
Reflection questions answered at submit. Common: "What was your strongest paragraph?", "What would you change with more time?", "What did you struggle with most?"
Required prompts gate submission. Optional ones don't.
Peer review peerReview
Students review each other's submitted work. Configure:
- Reviewers per submission — classmates per piece. Default 2.
- Review deadline — defaults to the assignment due date.
- Anonymous reviews — reviewer and author hidden from each other. Default on. You always see real names.
After creating, pick reviewers from the Peer review tab. Authors can post a one-shot response to each piece of feedback.
Peer-review grade weight peerReview.gradeWeight
With peer review on, a Grade weight field appears. Percent 0–100, default 0. Ties the reviewer's grade to whether they finished their assigned reviews.
At 0 peer review is formative — grade is the rubric alone. At 20, completing reviews contributes 20% of the reviewer's grade; rubric carries 80%. Skip every review and forfeit that 20%.
Per-assignment, not per-classroom. Set on the high-stakes essay where peer reads shape revision; leave at 0 on low-stakes work.
What's wired, what's coming
gradeWeight and reviewer-completion data are on every peer-review assignment — the weight is correct in submissions as soon as it's set. The in-app grade bar still renders the rubric-only percent until the async hook lands.
Variants — differentiated prompts variants
One assignment, different versions per student, routed automatically. Without variants, you build a separate assignment per population or send the differentiation in a DM.
The model — tags, routing, overrides
- Enrollment tags. In People, tag students with free-form labels —
esl,extended-time,honors,iep. Per (classroom, student):eslin English doesn't apply to math. - Variant definitions. Label, target tags, overrides for instructions, starter text, attachments.
- Routing. Red Stet walks variants in order against the student's tags. First match wins; no match falls back to the base.
Concrete example — three-population class
Standard students, ESL (esl), IEP (extended-time). Build the base for standard, add two variants routing to esl and extended-time. An ESL student sees only the ESL variant.
What students see (and don't)
A pill — "Variant: ESL" — on the panel. Other variants are invisible.
Privacy. Resolution is server-side. The browser receives only the routed variant. Devtools won't reveal the others.
Override semantics
A variant can override:
- Instructions — the markdown body
- Starter text — what pre-fills the doc
- Attachments — the file list
Title, due date, rubric, targets, sub-tasks, peer-review — shared.
Default variants — empty target tags
A variant with empty target tags is the default — applies to anyone unmatched. Inverted setup: put honors in the base, add a "Standard" default. Tagged honors students see the base; everyone else gets Standard.
Beyond IEP and ESL
Variants also cover early finishers, students who need scaffolding, and students working in a different genre.
Starter text starterBody
Pre-fills the student's document on first open. Useful for worksheet-style fill-in-the-blanks. Leave empty for a blank page.
Duplicating an existing assignment assignments.duplicate
Kebab menu → Duplicate spawns a draft copy. Useful for reusing a tuned rubric and prompt set.
Carried over:
- Title (suffixed " (copy)")
- Instructions
- Due date
- Style preset
- Max attempts
- Rubric — full criterion list and descriptors
- Self-assessment prompts — in source shape
Not carried: per-student targets, attachments, submissions, grades. Lands in draft.
Save vs Publish — the lifecycle
Four footer buttons:
- Cancel — discards, closes
- Save as draft — only you see it. Stage a series before publishing.
- Save & add another — saves and reopens blank
- Publish (or Save changes when editing) — visible to students, fires notifications
Scheduled publish. A future publish-on date lands in "scheduled" — invisible until it auto-publishes and notifies on the date.
Version history — editing after publishing
Editing triggers a version snapshot. Substantive changes — instructions, due date, rubric, targets, sub-tasks, peer review, attachments, reference links, max attempts, self-assessment — notify every enrolled student.
Cosmetic edits (title typo, tags) don't notify. Change note and Silent edit override either direction.
Up to 20 versions kept. View version history shows the diff. Students see a "Your teacher updated this assignment" banner; submit is gated until they Acknowledge.
Missing something? Email feedback — this doc grows by use.
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