Getting started

Connect Canvas

WriteNow uses your Canvas class lists, so only your enrolled students can join and open your assignments. Connect once with a Canvas access token: in Canvas, open Account → Settings, choose New Access Token, and copy the token into WriteNow.

WriteNow never changes your Canvas courses, grades, or submissions. It only sends the sign-in links students ask for and the TA invitations you send.

Where: Classes → Connect Canvas

Add your classes

Choose Add a class and pick one of your Canvas courses. Each course becomes a class with its own page, its own students, and its own announcements. The class list comes in from Canvas, and Update class list refreshes it after students add or drop.

Teaching two sections of the same course? Add the first as a class, then use Another section of a class you have? for the second, so both share one class page.

Where: Classes → Add a class

Set up each class page

The class page is where students join and find their work. Add a welcome message, a short description, links such as your syllabus, a color, and a cover photo. The preview beside the form shows exactly what students will see.

Your name, photo, email, and office hours are entered once and appear on all your class pages. Set the class’s last day of term: student work is kept until two weeks after it.

Where: Classes → Edit class page

Create assignments

Give the assignment a title, instructions, and dates in Korea time, or import one from Canvas. Then choose:

• Writing record: keeps earlier versions and any pasted text, so you can see how a draft grew.
• Pasting: allow it, or block pasting and dropping text.
• Writing assistant: an AI coach for this assignment, if you’ve set one up.
• Comments: show your comments as you write them, or together with the grade.

For a draft and a final version, link the final to the draft under Roadmap steps. Students then see the steps in order, with peer review between them if you add it. To reuse an assignment in another class, open it and choose Copy this assignment.

Where: Assignments → Create an assignment

Try it as a student

Before students arrive, open an assignment as your own test student. You can write, paste, use the assistant, and then grade the test draft to see the feedback students get. Test work never counts and never appears in downloads or peer review.

Where: an assignment’s page → Try it as a student

Open the class and invite students

When your first assignment is ready, check Students can see this class page and join on the class page, and publish the assignment. Then copy the class link, or the ready-made instructions, from your Home page into a Canvas announcement.

Students join with their G-number or Mason email. WriteNow sends a sign-in link to their Canvas Inbox, so no class codes or passwords pass through you.

Where: Home → Invite your students

Follow writing and grade

An assignment’s page shows who has started, word counts, and who needs grading. Start grading opens one paper at a time: select a passage to comment, choose rubric levels, and reuse comments you save. Drafts save as you go.

Students see a grade, and comments set to appear with it, only after you release it. When grades are released, Download grades for Canvas gives a file to import into the Canvas gradebook.

Where: Assignments → an assignment → Start grading

Peer review

On an assignment’s page, choose Set up peer review: how many classmates read each paper, your questions or rubric, and the dates. Assign papers, then release the submitted feedback when you’re ready. Students never see who reviewed them.

The writing assistant (optional)

The assistant coaches students without writing for them. It needs an API key from Patriot AI, or from OpenRouter, which WriteNow limits to providers that don’t keep or train on what they receive. You choose what it knows, such as the instructions and rubric, and which assignments use it. Each student agrees before their first question.

Where: Writing assistant

Teaching assistants

Invite TAs listed in your Canvas course. They can read and comment on drafts and prepare grades; only you release grades. A TA sees only the classes they were invited to.

Where: People & TAs → Invite a TA from Canvas

When the term ends

Choose Download class records to keep every student draft as a Word file, with a grades sheet. Two weeks after the class’s last day of term, WriteNow deletes its student work, grades, and class list. Your assignments and the class page stay, ready to copy into next term’s classes.

Where: Classes → Edit class page → Student records

Join your class

Open the class link your instructor shared and choose Join this class. Enter your G-number or Mason email. Then open Inbox in Canvas, open the message from WriteNow within 30 minutes, and choose a username and password.

Write

Open My classes and choose Start writing. Your work saves by itself; the bottom of the page says Saved. Write in one tab at a time: if you open the same paper in another tab, the first one pauses so the two copies can’t overwrite each other.

If your instructor keeps a writing record, earlier versions and any text you paste are saved for them to see. At the bottom of the page, the assignment access item (for example, “Writing record on”) shows exactly who can see your work.

Follow the steps

Some assignments have several steps, such as a draft, a peer review, and a final version. Your class page shows them in order and marks the one that’s ready for you. Peer reviews you need to do are under Peer reviews.

Read feedback

When your instructor releases your grade, open the paper and choose Feedback & rubric. Comments appear beside the passages they’re about. Show changes compares your versions.

Forgot your password

On the sign-in page, choose Forgot your password? and enter your G-number or Mason email. A reset link arrives in your Canvas Inbox.

Keep a copy

In the editor, choose File → Download as Word or PDF. Download anything you want to keep before the end of the term: your instructor’s class is cleared about two weeks after it ends.