GuidesClass setup guide

Setting up your class on Sympos.

This guide takes you from nothing to a live class with students enrolled. Budget 10 to 20 minutes, plus however long you spend polishing your first assignment. Sympos does three things for your course: assignments, insights, and contextual AI for you and your students. The setup steps below get you into all three.

The Sympos teamluke@sympos.org
Seven steps, one sitting

The setup path

You need: a pilot code from Sympos (the pilot guide explains how to get one)Your class material (syllabus, slides, readings, notes)
  1. 01
    Sign up

    Create your account.

  2. 02
    Redeem

    Activate instructor access with your pilot code.

  3. 03
    Create

    Your class, built from your material.

  4. 04
    Upload

    The rest of your course material.

  5. 05
    Assign

    Your first assignment.

  6. 06
    Share

    The join code. Students enroll themselves.

  7. 07
    Introduce

    Sympos to your students.

Steps 1 to 4

Getting set up

Create your account

Create an account at sympos.org. Use your institutional email if you prefer; either works.

Activate instructor access

On sympos.org, go to Settings → Billing & plan and enter the pilot code from your welcome email in the “Have a promo code?” box, then click Redeem. You may need to refresh the page; you now have instructor access. The pilot code covers you and your students.

Create your class

Click Create your first class. Two short steps:

  • Basics. Upload Syllabus (recommended): the AI extracts the class details from a PDF or TXT syllabus; review and correct what it pulled. Or Build from Scratch.
  • Visibility. Choose private (students join only with your code, the usual choice for a course) or public. Then create the class.

Upload your course materials

Open your new class from My Classes and use Upload to add lecture slides, readings, notes, and problem sets. Supports PDFs, slides, Word documents, spreadsheets, CSVs, notebooks, code files, plain text, and images.

Step 4 is what makes Sympos powerful: assignments and class AI built straight from your material. Add materials all semester, lecture by lecture.
The Have a promo code panel on the Settings, Billing and plan page, where an instructor enters a pilot code
Step 2. Settings → Billing & plan: the “Have a promo code?” box where you redeem your pilot code.
The Sympos sidebar after activation, showing the instructor sections above the student sections
The sidebar, instructor and student views: My classes, Create a new class, Join as a co-instructor, Insights Dashboard, and the Sympos AI Assistant.
The first big area · Setup step 05

Assignments

The AI conversation is the assignment: students reason out loud through a dialogue, so there is nothing to copy and paste. From your class page, open Assignments and create a new one.

Pick a type

  • Socratic dialogue

    A staged discussion; the student must reason through checkpoints you define.

  • Teach-back

    The student teaches the concept to the AI.

  • Debate

    The student argues a position against the AI in structured rounds.

  • Open-ended assessments

    Free-response work in the student's own words, including essays.

  • Oral defense

    The student submits their own completed work and defends it in an examination with the AI.

The Sympos assignment wizard showing the assignment type choices an instructor can pick from
Picking a type. Set up the assignment: title, description, and the type cards.

You design the conversation

  • Socratic dialogue: Set the waypoints and checkpoints the student must reason through.
  • Teach-back: Set the key topics the student must cover.
  • Debate: Set the key topics the rounds must argue.
  • Oral defense: Set how the student's submitted work is questioned and probed.
The Sympos assignment editor showing the Structure step with a seed message, waypoints, and the student preview panel
The assignment editor. Waypoints break the dialogue into stages, and the AI does not move on until your transition criteria are met. The AI can draft all of it from your uploaded materials; you edit and approve. Set the active dates, then preview it as a student (right panel) before publishing.
Tip: the guided setup on the instructor home page walks you through class details, objectives, a first assignment, and a test conversation in one flow, if you prefer that to doing the steps individually.
The second big area

Insights

As students work, Insights read the conversations so you do not have to. Three levels, from one student to the whole course. Worth a look before each lecture.

  • Level 1

    Student level

    Each student's work is evaluated against the criteria you set, and every score quotes the exact transcript lines behind it, so you can see the reasoning behind each grade.

    A graded student result quoting the exact transcript lines behind each score
  • Level 2

    Assignment level

    For each assignment: which concepts landed and which broke down, scored from real student conversations, plus how deeply students engaged in the dialogue.

    Assignment analytics showing how the class is doing on each key point, plus engagement
  • Level 3

    Class level

    Across the course: strongest areas, areas needing attention, common misconceptions, and recommended next assignments to close the gaps.

    Class-level insights listing strongest areas and areas needing attention across the course
The third big area

Contextual AI: the Sympos AI Assistant

Beyond assignments, every class comes with the Sympos AI Assistant, grounded in what you uploaded. One side for students, one for you.

For students. A class-scoped AI tutor they can use any time. Answers come from your materials, and each student only ever sees their own record.
A student asking the Sympos AI Assistant a question about class material and receiving an answer grounded in the uploaded materials
A student asks about the class material. A Bayesian-versus-SRS question in a Sports Analytics class, answered from the uploaded session notes, with citations.
For you. An assistant that holds every student's work across the class. Ask it about one student, one assignment, or the whole cohort.
An instructor asking the Sympos AI Assistant to help structure an exam review around class-wide gaps
The assistant's answer pulling class analytics into priorities for the review session
An instructor asks where the class is struggling as a whole. The assistant pulls the class analytics into a direct answer and structures the review around the gaps.
Setup step 06

Go live: share the join code

Your join code lives in the Class Details tab of your class. Paste this into your announcement or syllabus:

Copy and paste for your students

Once you have your class join code, students can join with the following steps:

  1. Create an account at https://sympos.org/
  2. Upon joining, you will be prompted to enter your student ID, please do so.
  3. Click "Join a new class" on the side bar.
  4. Enter the class code and click join.

If the class doesn't appear, refresh the screen.

The student sidebar in Sympos showing the Join a new class option
What students see: “Join a new class” in the sidebar.
Setup step 07

Introduce Sympos to your students

Three things worth telling them it does for them:

  • It is where they complete their assignments.
  • They can ask the Sympos AI Assistant questions about the class and its material.
  • It helps them see where their understanding needs work.

Questions or issues during the term? Email luke@sympos.org. Pilot issues get fixed fast.

The Sympos team · luke@sympos.org · sympos.org

Shape the conversation. Surface the learning.