Create your first activity

AIPLA teacher guide — T2

Before you start

An activity always belongs to a class. If you have not created a class yet, follow guide T1 — Set up a class and share it first, then come back here. This guide takes about five minutes.

What an activity is

An activity is a single guided task your students open in the tutor. You set the teaching goal and, optionally, a workspace — a simulation, a table, a chart, a calculator, or guiding notes. Students join with the class group code and work through the activity in conversation with the AI physics tutor, which follows the goal you set.

You do not need to write any code, and you do not need a developer. Everything on this page is done in your browser.

Prefer to describe it in words?

The builder has an AI co-pilot (bottom-right). Tell it what you want to teach and it drafts a teaching goal and workspace elements you can edit and apply — see T4 — Author with the AI co-pilot. Every step below can also be done by the co-pilot, not only by hand.

Step 1 — Open the activity builder

From your teacher area, open Classes, choose the class this activity is for, and select New activity. (You can also reach the builder from the class page’s New activity button, which pre-selects that class for you.)

The activity builder opens with a template picker at the top and a live preview on the right.

Step 2 — Choose a starting point

At the top of the builder is a template picker. Pick a template close to what you want — it fills in a sensible starting configuration — or start from blank. You can change everything afterwards, so the choice is not binding.

Step 3 — Set the teaching goal

Give the activity a title and a teaching goal. The goal is the most important field: it is the instruction the tutor follows when it talks to your students. Write it as you would brief a teaching assistant — for example, “Help the student reason about energy conservation on a frictionless ramp; do not give the final answer, ask guiding questions.”

Set the language the tutor should use with students, and pick a workbench type if this activity needs a workspace (or leave it as a chat-only conceptual dialogue).

The teaching goal is the instruction the tutor follows. Keep it specific.

Step 4 — Add a workspace (optional)

If you chose a workbench, add the elements your students will use — a simulation, a table to fill in, a chart, a calculator, or notes. The live preview on the right updates as you add each element, so you see exactly what the student will see.

Tip

Anything the student does in the workspace — values they enter, a simulation they run — is shared with the tutor, so it can respond to their actual work.

The live preview shows the student’s view as you build.

Step 5 — Create the activity

When you are happy with the preview, select Create activity. You will see a confirmation that the activity is live for your class.

The activity is now live; students who join the class group code can open it.

From the confirmation you can:

• Configure activity — reopen it to add curriculum documents or refine the goal (see T3 — Add and organise curriculum materials).
• Create another — start a fresh activity for the same class.
• Back to classes — return to your class list.

What students see

Students open the activity from the class group code (no login, no personal account — see S1 — Join and use your tutor). They get the tutor and, if you added one, the workspace. The tutor follows the goal you set and can see the work the student does in the workspace.

Next steps

• Add curriculum documents so the tutor can ground its answers in your materials — T3.
• Let the AI authoring co-pilot draft an activity from a plain-language description — T4 — Author with the AI co-pilot.