Course settings
For educators
Course-level configuration is held under settings in the course navigation. The sidebar there lists General, People, Groups, Period, Context, Research, Models, Data and Chatbots. Each is covered below.
Feature toggles
Section titled “Feature toggles”The Features toggles determine which tabs students see:
| Feature | What it gives students |
|---|---|
| Library | All course materials in one place |
| Chat | Answers sourced from the library |
| Practice | Practice questions, authored or generated |
| Structure | How topics connect across the materials |
| Activity | Educator-facing; where students are struggling |
Disabling Chat leaves a reading and practice environment with no AI answering. Disabling Practice is appropriate where assessment is handled elsewhere. Features are independent; none is required.
Exam mode
Section titled “Exam mode”Blocks student access to the course for a defined window. During the window students see an exam-mode screen and cannot open the course or query its materials.
Set Block Start and Block End. Verify the result with View as Student, at the foot of the settings sidebar, before the window opens.
View as Student
Section titled “View as Student”View as Student, at the foot of the settings sidebar, renders the course over the top of the page as a student sees it, covering hidden documents, disabled features, and exam mode. It avoids maintaining a second account for verification. Close it with the × at the top right.
The preview reflects role and features, not every educator control: some authoring controls are still drawn in the preview. Treat it as a check on what students can reach, not on what they can do.
Content language
Section titled “Content language”AI-generated content, practice questions, feedback, summaries, is produced in the language set here, independently of the interface language a student selects.
This matters where the language of instruction differs from the language of the materials.
Model selection and data residency
Section titled “Model selection and data residency”Model selection is configured per course.
There are two independent choices:
- For daily usage: models used for student chat, Q&A, assessments, and rubrics.
- For document processing: models used during ingestion (OCR, structure, embeddings), affecting extraction quality rather than conversation.
Each offers Best (Gemini), Good (Mistral), and Open Source (available on request).
Data residency is configured in the same section. Gemini offers Global (worldwide routing) or EU Hosted (EU regions only). A faculty or programme whose residency requirement differs from the wider institution can therefore be accommodated at course level.
Course context
Section titled “Course context”Structured context about the course: learning goals, an introduction, required materials, prerequisites.
This context is supplied to the AI, so that answers reflect the aims of the course and the knowledge students are assumed to hold. It can be generated from a syllabus rather than entered manually.
Where answers are generic or pitched at the wrong level, examine this section first.
Chatbots
Section titled “Chatbots”In addition to custom chatbots, this section controls:
- How closely answers follow your materials: the degree to which the AI is bound to course sources rather than general knowledge.
- Default chat mode for students: the mode students begin in, including Socratic.
See Control what the AI can use.
Weekly report emails
Section titled “Weekly report emails”Weekly activity reports are sent automatically to educators and administrators, and are enabled by default. Disable them if you prefer to consult course insights directly.
People
Section titled “People”People lists everyone enrolled by email address, with their role and a Remove control. The role shown is the role they hold; it is not editable from the list, so changing someone’s role means removing them and enrolling them again.
The + at the right of the table header opens Enroll User in Course. Supply an email address and choose a role: Student, Educator, Educator Assistant, or Admin. Student is the default.
Course participants who came from an LMS sync are maintained by that sync. Enrol by hand only for people the roster does not carry, such as a guest lecturer or an external examiner.
Groups
Section titled “Groups”Groups subdivides a cohort within the course. A group is created by name, and Manage members then chooses which enrolled students belong to it, with a search field for finding people in a large cohort.
Groups exist so that modules can be restricted to them: a module limited to a group is visible only to that group’s members, and only they can upload into it. Educators and educator assistants always see every module. See course materials for the restriction itself.
Where a course has several groups and each needs its own space, Create group folders makes one module per group in a single step, named after the group and already restricted to it. Groups that already have a module of their own are skipped.
Academic period
Section titled “Academic period”Associates the course with an academic period, filing it under Current, Upcoming, or Past in the library. Periods are defined by institution administrators; an empty list means none has been created.
Research consent
Section titled “Research consent”Where an institution conducts research on learning data, this requires student consent before participation. Disabled by default.
Export and deletion
Section titled “Export and deletion”Data holds two exports and the deletion control.
Export course
Section titled “Export course”Export Course downloads a portable copy of the course as a single archive named after
the course, with an .alexandria extension. It carries the course’s own settings, its
modules, and its materials: documents and their original files, pages, videos, the
extracted topics, and the sources behind them.
It is a copy of the course, not of what happened in it. Enrolments, student practice attempts, and conversations are outside it. Materials that have not finished processing are outside it too, so export once the library is settled rather than mid-ingest.
The archive is designed to be imported into another institution’s Alexandria. Importing is performed by an institution administrator, and it creates a new course rather than merging into an existing one.
Export conversations
Section titled “Export conversations”Export Conversations downloads every conversation turn recorded against the course, as Download JSON or Download CSV. Each row is one exchange and carries the question, the answer, when it was asked, the conversation it belongs to and its position in it, the pedagogical intent behind the answer, the scope the question was asked in, and the sources the answer drew on, each with its document name and page.
The download link is valid for one hour after you request it.
Danger zone
Section titled “Danger zone”Course deletion is permanent and requires the course name to be typed as confirmation. The preceding panel itemises what will be removed.