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Your AI-powered assessment redesign partner. No capes. No generic templates. No surveillance.
App Description
App Description
No capes. No generic redesigns.
Edna is your research-informed assessment redesign partner—an AI that asks thoughtful questions instead of generating quick answers. Together, we'll redesign assessments that make student thinking more visible while staying true to our discipline, our students, and our learning outcomes.
We bring the expertise. Edna helps us design with it more intentionally.
What To Bring
What To Bring
Edna works best when we arrive prepared. The more specific we are, the more meaningful the redesign will be.
Have your Canvas course open while you work. When Edna asks, simply copy and paste an existing formative or summative assessment directly from Canvas into the conversation. There's no need to recreate or reformat anything.
Please bring these things:
One real assessment
Choose an assessment you already use—especially one you know has room to grow. When Edna asks, paste the full assignment into the conversation.
The Student Learning Outcome (SLO)
Bring the specific Student Learning Outcome the assessment is designed to measure. It will serve as the anchor for every redesign decision.
Time and patience
Edna is designed to guide us through a thoughtful redesign—not a quick checklist. We recommend setting aside 45–60 minutes for each assessment. If the conversation slows down or feels repetitive, that's often a sign you're working through an important design decision.
If you need a break, take one—but keep your PlayLab Edna session open. Closing the session may cause you to lose your progress and require you to start over. Simply leave the browser tab open, step away if needed, and return when you're ready to continue.
Bring the real assignment. Bring the real outcome. Give the process real time.
The Journey: Six Phases
The Journey: Six Phases
Edna moves through six phases. She will not announce them to you — the conversation flows naturally. But knowing the journey before you begin helps you trust the process when it gets hard.
Grounding
Edna welcomes you and asks you to share your assignment, your SLO, and your own words for what student learning looks like in your course. This is the foundation. Nothing moves forward until all three are on the table.
The Friction Audit
Edna helps you examine what your assignment is actually measuring right now. Where is student thinking visible? Where is it invisible? What can AI currently do with your prompt — and what requires thinking that only your student can provide? This is the most challenging phase. It is also the most important.
Redesign Decisions
You identify what you want to keep and what you want to change. Edna listens to your proposals and responds honestly. If a change moves toward surveillance rather than learning, she names it — gently, as a shared instinct, not a mistake. If a change drifts from your SLO, she checks in. Every decision stays yours.
Drafting the Redesign
You write the redesigned assignment. Edna does not write it for you. She responds to what you draft — asking questions, affirming what is working, offering a gentle nudge where it could go further — until the design reflects your pedagogy, your discipline, and your students.
Drading Criteria & Formatting Gate
You decide how this assessment will actually be evaluated. If you want support, Edna offers three equity-minded rubric frameworks — starting points, not templates — built to make sure your criteria catch student thinking rather than surface polish. If you already know your criteria, Edna affirms it and moves forward. Either way, this is your call.
Canvas-Ready Delivery
Once your design and grading criteria are both complete, Edna produces a clean, structured text version of your redesigned assessment — ready to paste directly into Canvas. If you want help with WCAG accessibility formatting and Canvas-specific HTML, Edna will point you to Course Craft, a companion tool built exactly for that job. Final edits — your due dates, your course policies, your voice — are always yours. OR you can use your favorite WCAG 2.0 accessibility tool. Ask your DE Coordinator for guidance.
The destination isn't a better assignment. It's a better way of designing learning.
Why Edna Sometimes Slows Us Down
Why Edna Sometimes Slows Us Down
There may be moments when it feels like you're going in circles. You're probably not. Edna intentionally slows the conversation until the thinking is ready to move forward. If you're wondering why you haven't advanced, simply ask, "What should I be considering right now?" Edna will help you identify what's missing. Every redesign moves through all six phases, and there is a clear endpoint.
This work asks something of us, and that deserves to be acknowledged. Reflecting on our teaching takes courage. Some of Edna's questions may challenge familiar assumptions—and that's part of the process.
If you need a break, take one—but keep your PlayLab Edna session open. Simply leave the browser tab open, step away, and return when you're ready so you don't lose your progress.
There is no expectation of perfection. Our goal is to engage honestly in the work of designing learning experiences where student thinking is visible and meaningful.
Sometimes the most important progress happens before it feels like progress. The best assessment redesign doesn't begin with the perfect answer. It begins with an honest question.
What We Leave With
What We Leave With
At the end of a complete Edna session, we will have three things:
A redesigned assessment
A redesigned assessment
Student thinking, judgment, and voice become visible evidence of learning. The goal is not to make the assignment AI-proof, but to design it so AI can support the work without replacing the student.
A Canvas-ready version
A Canvas-ready version
Edna generates accessible HTML that we can paste directly into the Canvas Rich Content Editor. Accessibility support is built into the design, including a footer that reminds students that barriers matter and help is available.
Our own design reasoning
Our own design reasoning
We will be able to explain what changed, why it changed, and how the redesign connects to our SLOs and students. This may be the quietest outcome, but it is also the most lasting.
We leave with more than a stronger assignment. We leave with a stronger way of designing learning.
There is no perfect moment to start this work. There is only the assignment sitting in your gradebook right now, the students who will respond to it, and the question of whether the design is serving them as well as it could.
Edna is ready when you are.
No capes. No generic templates. Just the right assessment for the students standing in front of you.
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