Designing AI-supported classroom assignments
Goal
Build assignments that use AI intentionally — with the right guardrails and structure. This article covers design decisions; for the step-by-step of actually building one, see How to create a class and an assignment.
Start with the learning objective, not the tool
Decide what students should be able to do before you decide how AI fits in. Use the assignment's Learning Objectives tab to write this down — it also helps guide the bot's responses, since the AI can see what the assignment is trying to achieve. An assignment built AI-first ("let's use a chatbot for this") tends to produce weaker work than one built objective-first ("students need to practice X, and AI can help them practice it this way").
Decide how much AI is appropriate
Not every task should allow full AI drafting, and not every task should ban AI either. Before you build, decide where this assignment sits — from AI-assisted brainstorming only, up through AI as a full collaborator — and say so explicitly to students in the assignment's Directions. See AI Use Tiers for a shared vocabulary to use across your syllabus so students aren't guessing per-assignment.
Scope the AI tools (sandboxing)
In the assignment's Bots tab, choose:
All bots — students get everything in BoodleBox, or
Specifically selected bots — restrict to just the tools you want (e.g. Perplexity + a writing coach, or a single custom bot built for this assignment).
Sandboxing keeps students focused, makes expectations clear, and stops an assignment meant to build one skill from quietly becoming "ask any AI to do it for you." A custom bot with narrow instructions (see Designing effective bot instructions) is usually a better guardrail than turning students loose on every model.
Structure what students see
Build the Directions tab out of purposeful blocks rather than one wall of text:
Heading / Text Editor — the task itself, broken into stages if it's multi-step.
Call Out — surface the guardrails (allowed AI use, academic-integrity expectations, what counts as "your own work") where students can't miss them.
Chat — an embedded AI conversation, powered by a specific bot, scoped to exactly the sandboxed tool(s) from the step above.
YouTube / Separator — supporting media and visual breaks between stages.
Coach Mode and access settings
Toggle Coach Mode on when you want the bot to append AI-literacy tips and suggested next prompts — useful for students still learning how to work with AI well; turn it off once a class is more experienced, so the assignment reads as pure task.
In Settings, decide enrolled-only vs. anyone-with-the-link, and set due dates.
Break large work into checkpoints
Build separate weekly (or stage) assignments rather than one big one — it's far easier for you to find and review each stage's work, and easier for students to get feedback before moving on.
For work that's meant to be collaborative rather than individual, use Managing group AI projects instead of one shared assignment — it gives each group its own space while still letting you monitor every group from one place.
Watch and review as the assignment runs
You can watch students from the moment they start — submission isn't required for you to see activity.
Use the assignment's Teacher Dashboard to see each student's Chats, Exchanges, Messages, and Status, and Insights for an AI-generated read across the whole assignment. See How to review student AI conversations.
Reviewing mid-assignment, not just at submission, is what actually catches a mis-scoped sandbox or an unclear direction — fix it for the next stage instead of the next semester.
Common pitfalls
Too broad a sandbox. "All bots" on a skill-building task usually means the skill never gets practiced — default to specifically selected bots unless open exploration is the actual point.
No stated AI-use expectations. If Directions doesn't say what's allowed, assume students will use whatever the Bots tab lets them reach, in whatever way is fastest.
One giant assignment instead of staged ones. Makes both grading and mid-course correction harder than it needs to be.
Verify it's working
Preview the assignment, confirm the allowed tools match your intent, and check it appears for enrolled students.
Open the Teacher Dashboard partway through and confirm activity looks like what you expected — not just that submissions eventually arrive.
Questions?
See How to create a class and an assignment. Reach out through our contact form and we'll get back to you.