If you have ideas to share, questions to ask, or just looking to see what’s possible - Share your thoughts here and the Nectir team will review after the session!
Reflect, Swap Strategies, Share the Load
Which of these creative use cases sparked an idea for your teaching?
What’s one thing you want to try next semester, and what would you need to make it happen?
How could you collaborate with colleagues to pilot one of these approaches?
What creative application did we NOT cover that you think would be valuable?
I’m curious to try a “sub-assistant” for a specific exercise or project. For example, build a hypothetical supervising attorney or client that takes the student through an interactive simulation of a conversation they might have in the “real world” of work.
In terms of the future, on Canvas, I heavily use rubrics for transparency to students and to help make my grading more objective and more efficient. It would be great if the SpeedGrader in Canvas could integrate with Nectir (maybe a teacher’s grading sub-assistant) and highlight or color code, strengths, weaknesses, and other parameters that are relevant for grading or providing feedback to the student on qualitative assignments (e.g., writing submission or discussion post). In this case, the special integrated Nectir teacher’s assistant would not be replacing the teacher or grading function, but would operate like advanced avionics do on a planes for pilots - augmenting the teaching / grading process with time-saving tech.
I’d love to figure out a way to allow students to create their own Nectir Assistants that would be scalable and not require manual labor every term on our end
@anna.letro Hey! Question for you - Any thoughts on how we can scale permission assignment and group creation with existing users?
I had another instructor who wanted students to make Assistants but had to manually create a Group for each student (30 something) and manually assign ownership to each Group.
This was exactly our issue. We were moving forward with building out an assignment, and our tech team basically said that it was not something they could manage long term. We also have a unique set up at LAPU where the instructor doesn’t manage the tech integrations, our internal team does it all, across every section, every session.
It would be cool if we could set it up to where the student could click a button in the LMS that then generates a unique instance of a blank assistant for them to build in.
We also had the question arise: is there a way for the student to take their creation with them after graduation? This specific idea was for a Capstone course, so the tool they make would essentially be an assistant of their own design that would assist them in their future practice. I know that’s not really the point of the tool, fundamentally…but it’s worth thinking about
Great question, we’ve actually been talking about this internally too!
One idea we’ve explored is adding an “Editor” role at the group level. Editors would be able to create their own groups and assistants, but not edit anyone else’s. It could be a good way to give students more flexibility without losing instructor control.
That said, we know permissions can get complicated and vary a lot between schools. We’re thinking longer-term about building a permission management panel where instructors and admins can define custom roles and set exactly what each role can do.
Curious to hear how these ideas land with your team, what do you think?
Hey @Harvey-Zey ! Let me know if you need any support with the “sub-assistant.” That sounds like a really engaging activity! I would be happy to share some of the role-playing prompts we have with our sandbox Assistants if that’s helpful.
@jordan@anna.letro Tagging you so you can see the integration request from Harvey!
This is a really interesting idea @Harvey-Zey . We’ve been wanting to do deeper integrations on the grading/assessment side. If you’re open to it, I’d love to meet with you for 15/30 min to see your current process and better understand the workflow. Just DM me if interested!
I realize this is “off campus” from Nectir, but I believe I have created something in ChatGPT that achieves what you are referring to (in part, at least). It is a customized GPT stocked with all of the assignment parameters, common overall and topic-specific feedback I have issued over the past 10+ years, narrative writing guidance, the rubric criteria, and even an exemplar of the final paper as a “one shot” example for AI to refer to. Students receive guardrailed feedback pointing out strength, weaknesses, and areas in need of attention (but no grade!) before they submit it for my inline feedback. Let me know if you would like a walkthrough of how to create this kind of object. Based on my student surveys, they seem to like it and it has cut down on my workload significantly in draft feedback.
If Nectir can replicate this capability, that would be huge.
This is definitely possible with Nectir! We’ve already had instructors create similar setups with great success.
You can upload your rubric, assignment parameters, feedback examples, and even exemplars directly to your Assistant’s knowledge base. Then customize the prompt to provide the type of guardrailed feedback you’re describing - highlighting strengths and areas for improvement without giving grades.
Here is a prompt that some faculty at LAPU has been testing! I’ve made it more generalized so it can be easily adapted. This one does give a grade, base on the rubic, but you can easily remove that directive in the prompt if that’s not what you prefer.
It sounds like your ChatGPT setup would translate really well to Nectir!
Today’s slides: Feedback Session (June 2025)
Reflect, Swap Strategies, Share the Load
Which of these creative use cases sparked an idea for your teaching?
What’s one thing you want to try next semester, and what would you need to make it happen?
How could you collaborate with colleagues to pilot one of these approaches?
What creative application did we NOT cover that you think would be valuable?