Cirrus Assist is an AI add-on that helps authors create, refine, and improve assessment questions directly inside the item editor. Use this article to understand what it does, what question types it supports, and the basic workflow.
Cirrus Assist is an add-on. To enable a trial on your tenant, contact Cirrus through the Customer Portal.
What Cirrus Assist does
Cirrus Assist sits in the side panel of the item editor and offers three modes:
- General chat: open-ended chat for exploring ideas, no question-builder structure.
- Create question from scratch: guided prompts that produce a question tailored to your specification.
- Organise from raw text: a single-prompt path that turns existing text into a question. Faster than guided, less precise.
Supported question types and inputs
| Supported | |
|---|---|
| Question types | Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, Either/Or, Essay |
| File uploads for context | PDF, Word (.doc, .docx) |
Other item types are not currently supported by Cirrus Assist's guided generation.
Create a question from scratch
Cirrus Assist guides you through prompts to capture what you want:
General prompts (every question type)
- What is the specific topic or subject area?
- How challenging should the question be?
- Are there specific details or constraints to include?
- Should the question be set within a particular context or scenario?
- What instructions or guidelines ensure clarity?
Additional prompts (Essay only)
- What is the desired format of the answer?
- How should marks be allocated across the answer?
- What are the key points or model answers?
Pick what to keep
After answering the prompts, a Select all panel shows:
- Title.
- Question.
- Choices (4 for Multiple Choice and Multiple Response; 2 for Either/Or).
- Topic.
- Difficulty (Angoff scale, 0 to 1).
- Feedback on alternatives (when enabled).
- Feedback on the question itself.
- For Essay only: marking scheme.
Tick the parts you want and select Confirm to push them into the item editor. Regenerate any part by clicking its refresh button; use the arrows to navigate between multiple AI responses.
Organise from raw text
Paste a chunk of source material (notes, an article, a textbook excerpt) and Cirrus Assist generates a question from it in one step. Useful when you have ready-made content and want a quick draft.
Reset and AI source
- The circular-arrow icon in the top right of the side panel resets the chat and returns to the start screen.
- By default Cirrus Assist uses ChatGPT with web search. Cirrus may update the underlying model and provider over time; the current sub-processor is listed in the List of sub-processors.
Workflow
- Open the side panel inside the item editor.
- Choose a mode.
- Follow the prompts (when guided).
- Review the suggestions.
- Confirm to populate the question editor.
- Edit the result by hand as needed.