TeamShapeFor Instructors
How TeamShape Works
TeamShape captures how students reason, explore, and work with AI — giving you visibility into the learning process behind every assignment.
1. Process-Based Assessment
Assessment is evolving. A polished document may reflect deep understanding or a well-crafted prompt — and both are worth recognizing differently. Process-based assessment makes this possible.
TeamShape enables assessment of how students produce their work— their reasoning, exploration, iteration, and engagement with AI — alongside the work itself.
In practice, this means students are rewarded for:
- •Exploring ideas before committing to an approach
- •Iterating with AI — designing prompts, challenging responses, curating output
- •Contributing to shared reasoning through discussion and peer feedback
- •Refining drafts and building on others' work
The final document still matters — it determines output quality. The process insights enrich your understanding of how each student got there.
2. The Learning Workspace
Each assignment gets an integrated workspace where students do all their work. Whether working individually or in teams, the workspace captures the full reasoning process — synchronously or asynchronously.
Document Editor
A real-time collaborative editor where students produce their deliverable. In team assignments, multiple students edit simultaneously. Every edit is attributed.
Discussion Space
A conversation space for team discussion (or instructor-student dialogue in individual work). Ideas raised here that influence the document are part of the learning record.
Private Scratchpad
A private drafting space for each student, visible only to them and the instructor. Scratchpad activity demonstrates reasoning depth — the thinking before the writing.
AI Assistants
Depending on your configuration, students may have a shared Team AI and/or a Private AI. All AI conversations are captured as part of the learning process.
Students can move content between panels. When content moves from AI or the scratchpad into the document, TeamShape tags the origin automatically — creating a traceable reasoning trail.
3. What Gets Captured
TeamShape captures activity across all workspace panels. Students know their reasoning process is being captured — this transparency is what makes the platform valuable for both learning and assessment.
| Activity | Where | What's recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Writing and editing | Document | Who wrote what, content origin (original, AI-assisted, scratchpad, external) |
| Discussion | Chat | Ideas raised, questions asked, peer feedback |
| AI interaction | Team AI / Private AI | Prompts, AI responses, iteration count, composition time |
| Idea development | Scratchpad | Drafts, notes, reasoning traces (visible only to student and instructor) |
| Content integration | Cross-panel | When content moves between panels, with source attribution |
4. AI Orchestration as a Competency
Working effectively with AI is a skill. TeamShape treats it as such: when students use AI, the platform captures how they engaged with it. Simply copy-pasting the first response is very different from iterating, refining, and curating.
TeamShape looks at several dimensions of AI engagement, including:
- •Idea attribution — Did the student's own ideas drive the result, or was it mostly AI-generated?
- •Curation effort — How much did the student transform AI output before using it?
- •Prompt quality — Were the prompts targeted and specific, or vague and generic?
- •Iteration depth — Did the student engage in multiple rounds of refinement with AI?
- •Contextual grounding — Was the student active in the workspace before turning to AI?
A student who designs targeted prompts, iterates across multiple rounds, and carefully curates the output demonstrates genuine AI orchestration skill. A student who sends one generic prompt and pastes the response unchanged does not. Both are visible in your dashboard.
5. Process Insights
TeamShape provides a rich picture of each student's learning process. After the deadline, you can review individual process profiles that show how each student contributed, how they worked with AI, and how their ideas developed over time.
Individual contributions
In team assignments, see who contributed what — including discussion, editing, and idea development, not just final text.
AI engagement quality
Understand how each student used AI — whether they iterated thoughtfully or relied on copy-paste.
Reasoning trail
See the origin of ideas: which content was original, which came through AI, and how it was refined before reaching the final document.
Process transparency
A confidence indicator shows how much of each student's work has a visible reasoning trail, helping you identify where to look closer.
You decide how to use these insights
Process insights are a tool for you, the instructor. You might use them as an additional bonus for students who engaged deeply, as part of a participation grade, as input to your own assessment rubric, or simply as a way to understand how your students learn. TeamShape gives you the data — you decide what to do with it.
6. What You Can Configure
Each assignment has its own configuration. You can run different assignments with different AI policies and assessment approaches.
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Team AI | Enable or disable shared AI visible to all team members |
| Private AI | Enable or disable individual AI visible only to each student |
| AI Model | Which AI model students interact with (e.g., GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini) |
| AI Context Sources | What the AI can see: document, chat history, scratchpad, uploaded files |
| System Prompts | Custom instructions for AI behavior (e.g., “act as a Socratic tutor”) |
| Subgroups | Split teams into subgroups with siloed discussion; AI bridges subgroups |
| Assessment Rubric | The criteria used to evaluate output quality and process engagement |
| Deadline | After the deadline, the workspace becomes read-only |
7. Why Students Engage Authentically
TeamShape aligns student incentives with genuine learning. Thoughtful engagement is the rational choice — and the most rewarding one.
The process is visible
Students know their reasoning journey is captured: exploring ideas, iterating with AI, discussing with peers, and refining their work. This visibility encourages genuine engagement.
AI orchestration is a recognized skill
Students who design specific prompts, challenge AI responses, and curate output demonstrate a valuable competency. The platform makes that skill visible.
Working inside the platform earns the most credit
The same AI is available inside TeamShape, where the full reasoning process is captured and valued. Students get the best outcome by doing their thinking here.
Every form of contribution is valued
Raising a good question, structuring reasoning in the scratchpad, refining a teammate's draft — all captured and visible to the instructor, alongside writing in the document.
The result: the individually best strategy for each student — work visibly, use AI thoughtfully, engage with ideas — is also the strategy that produces the best learning outcomes.
Ready to try it?
Set up your first assignment and see the learning process for yourself.
Try it with your next assignment