Frequently Asked Questions

TYay is an AI grading and feedback assistant built for science and math teachers. Teachers upload a rubric, TYay's AI generates grading criteria for each question, students complete their work in a Google Doc, and the AI grades submissions with feedback placed directly as comments in the student's document. Teachers review every score and comment before releasing grades to students.

Yes, the Teachers Magic Wand lets a teacher upload a rubric PDF and test it on sample answers right away, with no account required. It's reachable from the TYay home page or directly at /freesmartassignment, and it walks through generating questions, testing sample answers, and reviewing the AI's scores and feedback. Signing in with Google is only needed if the teacher wants to save the result as a real assignment.

From a course page, press Create Assignment, then upload a rubric PDF or Word file, either from your computer or the Google Drive picker. TYay's AI generates draft questions and grading criteria from the rubric, which the teacher edits and approves question by question. Once every question is approved, finalizing the assignment builds the student-facing Google Doc template.

Every rubric or material upload in TYay accepts PDF or Word (.docx) files, up to 4 MB each. This applies to the home page rubric upload, the free Teachers Magic Wand flow, the Rubric Library, and the assignment builder, including files pulled in through the Google Drive picker. Old-format .doc files aren't supported; TYay will ask you to re-save it as .docx or PDF first.

Once an assignment is finalized, its student link is available from the course page for you to share by email or through your LMS. Students open the link from the section's landing page, which lists every available assignment and needs no login to view. Editing and re-finalizing an assignment keeps the same shared link pointed at the newest version, so links never need to be re-copied.

TYay has a free forever tier (no credit card, one assignment total, 10 grading submissions a month) plus three paid plans: Elective at $29 a month or $290 a year for student teachers and tutors, Core at $59 a month or $590 a year for the average classroom teacher, and Capstone at $149 a month or $1490 a year for AP, IB, and department-head use. Each paid plan raises the monthly submission, assignment, and mock-grading limits, and the Gradebook is included starting at Core. Current pricing and any active promotions are on the pricing page.

TYay measures usage in units: every 20 questions in an assignment equals 1 unit, rounded up, so a 25-question assignment counts as 2 units. Each graded student submission uses units based on that assignment's question count, and this is what's tracked against a plan's monthly submission allowance. Assignment creation and mock grading are tracked separately, each with their own monthly limit.

A teacher who runs out of monthly submissions or mock gradings before the next reset can buy a refill pack of 50 submissions plus 5 mockups from the Usage page in Settings, using the Buy Refill Pack button. Refill packs cost $17.99 on Free, Elective, and Core, and $15.00 on Capstone, and are available on every tier, including Free.

Student work stays in the teacher's own Google Drive rather than being permanently stored on TYay's servers; it's processed temporarily during grading. Student data is never used to train AI, by TYay or by its AI providers, and that restriction is written into TYay's agreements with those providers. Schools and districts that need a formal Data Processing Agreement for FERPA can request one by emailing TYaysupport@kernioncognitivelabs.com, and the Data Policy and Privacy Policy pages have the full legal detail.

Removing a student from a section, using the red trash button on their student card, permanently deletes their submissions, scores, and AI feedback for that section, along with the graded snapshot copies TYay made in the teacher's Google Drive. It does not touch the student's own Google Doc, only TYay's copies, and the action cannot be undone. This is how a teacher honors a student data deletion request under privacy laws like FERPA; if the same student is enrolled with another teacher, only the requesting teacher's section data is affected.

After a student submits, TYay's AI grades the work against the teacher's per-question criteria and places it in the course's Pending Review queue. The teacher reviews each AI-generated score and feedback comment and can adjust anything before approving; only after approval are grades released and comments placed directly in the student's Google Doc. Students are notified by Google's own Docs-sharing email once their graded work is available.

Teachers review submissions from the course page's Pending Review section, where each question shows the student's answer alongside the AI's score and feedback comment. Any score can be adjusted with its slider, in 0.125-point steps, and any comment can be edited before release. Pressing Approve releases the grade and places the final comments in the student's Google Doc.

Yes, a teacher can turn on handwritten and photo submissions per assignment on the Finalize page. Students then choose to type in the Google Doc as usual or upload photos or a PDF of handwritten pages instead, and TYay transcribes the handwriting into the student's document, keeping the student's own wording and flagging unreadable or low-confidence passages for the teacher to check. From there it grades and comments exactly like a typed submission, and teachers can always compare the transcription against the original scanned page while reviewing.

TYay creates the student-facing assignment as a Google Doc template directly in the teacher's own Drive, so every submission follows the same clean structure. After grading, AI feedback is placed as comments anchored directly next to the specific answer they refer to, right inside the student's document, rather than as a separate report. Teachers can also install TYay's Chrome extension so those comments post under the teacher's own Google account instead of TYay's shared grading account.

Yes, TYay can connect to a school's Canvas instance using an access token generated in Canvas settings. Once a section is linked to a Canvas course and an assignment is linked to a Canvas assignment, approving and releasing a submission in TYay automatically pushes the score, per-question rubric feedback, and a link back to the full Google Doc feedback into Canvas. TYay's own Google Doc with anchored comments stays the primary, richer feedback surface; Canvas receives the score and a summary.

The Gradebook, available on Core and Capstone plans, shows every student's scores across all assignments in a section, with student names pinned on the left and the assignment header row pinned at the top while scrolling. Teachers switch between sections with the section tabs, can view it in fullscreen, and can export the whole table to a spreadsheet with the Excel export button. A per-section Grades tab offers the same table and export for just that section.