Student workspace guide
Science Inquiry Studio is a place where you do science with an AI team at your side. Every activity is a guided investigation: you get a real question or phenomenon, a sequence of steps, and one or more AI assistants that coach you — they ask questions, react to your evidence, and help you build charts, models, games, and presentations, but they never just hand you the answer.
An activity keeps everything about one investigation in a single workspace: the question, directions, step goals, AI assistants, chat history, files, and the artifacts you build.
1. How activities reach you
There are three ways an activity lands on your My Activities page:
- Your teacher assigns it to your class. It appears grouped under that class.
- You join a class with a class code. Click Join a class, enter the code your teacher shared, and the class's assigned activities appear.
- You import it yourself from the Library. Anyone with an account — including students who signed up on their own — can browse the Library and import activities to play. Imported activities appear in the My imported activities section. (See the "Explore the Library" guide.)
Open an activity, read the goal, and look at the Step N of M banner at the top of the chat — that is always your next move.
2. Steps and the "Step N of M" banner
Every activity is built from a sequence of steps. Each step is one important part of the investigation, and the banner at the top of the chat always shows the current step's goal in plain language:
Step 2 of 4 — Collect evidence: Record at least three careful observations of the Moon's shape over several nights.
A typical investigation flows like this:
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| Discuss the phenomenon | Explain the pattern or problem you are studying |
| Collect or organize evidence | Put observations, measurements, or notes into a useful form |
| Analyze evidence | Look for patterns, compare groups, or make a chart |
| Explain your final reasoning | Use the artifacts you built as evidence and explain what they show |
A step is completed when the AI reviews your explanation in the chat and decides it meets the step's goal — not just because you produced an artifact. Charts, labs, and presentations are evidence you refer to in the chat; the explanation is the finish line.
A step can be marked complete three ways:
- The AI marks it complete when your chat explanation meets the goal.
- You mark it complete yourself.
- Your teacher marks it complete for you.
You finish an activity when all of its required steps are complete.
3. Difficulty levels (1–5)
Every activity has a difficulty level from 1 to 5, shown as "Level: N" on the activity card.
The level changes two things:
- How the activity is built. Higher levels have more demanding steps.
- How the AI assistants behave. At Level 1 they give lots of hints and break work into small pieces. At Level 5 they act like a demanding mentor: few hints, rigorous questions, and they expect you to reason for yourself.
The same topic can exist at an easier or harder level — if an activity feels very supportive or very tough, the level is usually why.
4. Points, badges, and your Profile
Finishing an activity awards 10 points per difficulty level, once per activity:
| Difficulty | Points |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | 10 |
| Level 3 | 30 |
| Level 5 | 50 |
You also earn badges along the way — about fourteen of them, including First Finish, milestones for 5, 10, and 25 finished activities, Challenge Seeker (finish a Level 4), Master (finish a Level 5), point tiers at 100, 500, and 1000, and day streaks of 3, 7, and 30 days.
Open your Profile to see the Achievements panel: total points, day streak, activities finished, and the full badge grid. Locked badges tell you exactly how to earn them. Your teacher can see your points and badges too.
5. Work with the right AI assistant
An AI assistant is a customized coach for one part of the activity. Activities often have different assistants for different steps:
| Step | Example assistant | Good use |
|---|---|---|
| Discuss the phenomenon | Pattern Explorer | Choose a pattern and understand what causes it |
| Plan an investigation | Experiment Planner | Plan variables, materials, trials, and fair tests |
| Analyze evidence | Data Analyst | Make charts, summarize data, fit models |
| Build a final artifact | Presentation / 2D / 3D Builder | Create the product your step asks for |
Pick the assistant listed for your current step. In a team chat you can mention one directly with @Assistant Name.
An assistant tied to a later step can be locked until you finish the step before it — finish the earlier step and it unlocks automatically.
You can also talk instead of type: every chat box has a microphone button that turns your speech into text.
6. Ask for one milestone at a time
For big builds, ask for a small reviewable milestone instead of everything at once:
Build the first version of a 2D Moon-phase illustration. Show Earth, Moon, and Sun direction, with a slider for Moon position. Stop after the first working version.
Then review and improve:
Keep the same illustration. The labels are hard to read, and I need the Earth-view Moon shape in a corner. Add those only.
The assistant improves the existing artifact instead of restarting from scratch — you stay in control of the design.
7. Tools the assistants can use
You never click a tool button — the activity creator chooses which tools each assistant may use, and the assistant decides when a tool helps.
| Tool | What the assistant can create |
|---|---|
| Charts | Line, bar, pie, and scatter charts |
| Calculator | Exact calculations with formulas and units |
| Web search | Reliable background sources |
| Describe data | Mean, median, range, spread, outliers |
| Hypothesis test | Compare two groups carefully |
| Fit regression | Fit a line or curve model |
| Visual presentation | A short slide deck |
| Interactive 2D lab | A simulation, animation, or game-like lab |
| Interactive 3D scene | A rotatable 3D model |
Tool-ready prompt:
Here are our measurements with units. Make a scatter plot, fit a line, explain what the slope means, and tell me one limitation.
8. Prompt Clinic
If your teacher turns on Prompt Clinic for an assignment, a small rating appears under each message you send. It does not grade your science — it rates whether your message gives the assistant enough information to help well, and it teaches you to write better prompts.
Weak:
Make it better.
Stronger:
Keep the same 2D circuit model. Move the switch into the wire gap, make the resistor brighter against the dark background, and add a short explanation of why current changes when resistance changes.
Habits that make every prompt stronger:
- Include your data and units.
- Name the output you want: table, graph, plan, slide, 2D lab, or 3D model.
- Say what should stay the same.
- Use expected vs. actual: "I expected __, but I see __."
- Ask the assistant to ask you questions first when you are unsure.
9. Artifacts are evidence
Artifacts are the things you build inside an activity: charts, tables, diagrams, presentations, interactive 2D labs, and 3D scenes. Keep improving them one change at a time, then reference them in the chat and explain what they show. Building an artifact alone does not complete a step — your explanation does.
10. Share, join, and clone
Use Share activity when another user should use your activity:
| Share mode | What happens |
|---|---|
| Join | The other user enters the same live activity and collaborates in the shared chat |
| Clone | The other user gets a separate copy of the setup; chat history is not copied |
Use Join for real group work, Clone when several people should start from the same setup but work separately.
11. If your teacher assigned the activity
Assigned activities can carry teacher settings. Your teacher may allow or block changing assistant settings, adding assistants, and sharing for join or clone. If the teacher stops the activity, you can still view your work but not change it.
Class-assigned activities are grouped by class on your dashboard. You can withdraw from a class there; your own activity copies stay in your list.