What's new in Nurture

Students can now answer by uploading files, teachers can reopen a session that ended too soon, and a wrong answer key can be fixed after students have answered.

Nurture Signal

New

• File upload questions: Students can answer by uploading up to 10 files (PDF, PNG, JPEG or WEBP, up to 20 MB each). Teachers can open the files on each response, and marking against success criteria and personalised feedback read them too. Turn it on for a question when you need it. It is off by default.
• Reopen a session: Ended a session by accident? Press Resume (live sessions) or Reopen (quizzes) on the toolbar. Within 8 hours it reopens straight away. After that, you are asked first. If a session can’t be reopened, the button stays on screen and tells you why.
• Fix a correct answer after students have answered: If an answer key is wrong, you can now change which option is correct. You are asked to confirm first. Every answer is marked again, personalised feedback is refreshed, grades already sent to Canvas or Teams are updated, and the question shows when the answer was changed.
• Parents and supporters: From a student’s profile, add a parent (or supporter) by email. They can follow the student’s work in the classroom, read only.
• Images in the question box: Add a picture with the new Image button, or paste or drop one straight into the question. Teachers can add images to check-ins too, and students see them wherever the check-in appears.

Improvements

• Generate with AI: Choose how many of each type you want, whether you start from a topic or a file. A file no longer decides how many questions you get, and the new defaults are closer to what teachers really run. Engagement checks now only ask how students feel.
• Getting started: New teachers are guided to create a first session, then run one with students. “Create your account” now shows as done, so progress starts at 1 of 3.
• Reflection: A published assessment’s Reflection slide now shows the type of reflection and a Preview of what students will see.
• Joining a session: The join page now tells students whether the code is wrong, the session has ended or the quiz is closed.
• Dashboard: Loads faster and shows placeholders while it loads.
• Share cards: Shared session cards always read “By” followed by the teacher’s name.
• Roster: The “You” badge now matches the Co-teacher badge.

Fixes

• Students tab: Students typed in by hand for paper (low-tech) sessions now appear once, with one progress profile, instead of once for every session.
• Maths: Plain numbers such as years or head-counts no longer open the maths keyboard in a text answer.
• Documents: A locked or damaged PDF now gives a clear message, rather than a misleading page-count error that Retry could never fix.

Creating a session is now a single screen, teachers can follow each student’s progress, and students can get feedback after every answer.

Nurture Signal

New

• Student profiles: Open a classroom, go to the Students tab and click a name to see their accuracy, engagement, feedback and reflections in one place. Open answers marked against criteria now count towards accuracy, so some figures may look different.
• Feedback as you go: In self-paced quizzes, teachers can turn on feedback after every answer. Students see how they went straight away, and their answer is locked in.
• Saved progress: Students’ self-paced answers save as they move between steps. Teachers can see who is in progress and what they have written so far.
• Sessions from a file: Premium teachers can create a session from an uploaded file and attach supporting documents for more personal feedback.
• Question images: Add a description with up to three images to any question. Students see it neatly tucked under “Show more”, with images below the text.
• Model answers: Open questions can have up to five model answers, each showing which criteria it meets. When you share them, students can flip between them.
• Student directory: A new Students page lists everyone who has joined your sessions, across all your classrooms, with search, filters and profiles.
• Dashboard for everyone: Students and teachers now have a dashboard and a side menu to find their sessions and classrooms quickly.
• My insights: Students can see their own progress on each classroom’s page.
• Maths anywhere: Switch between Text and Maths on any writing field, including answers, comments, reflections and explanations.
• Avatars: Build your own cartoon-style avatar in your preferences, shown wherever your picture appears.
• Preview as student: See exactly what students see when they join, without joining.
• Check AI questions: Before you publish or start a session with AI-written questions you haven’t opened, you’re asked to confirm you’ve checked the answers and explanations.

Improvements

• Creating sessions: Set up a session on one screen. Pick the session type from a dropdown and the set-up appears right below it.
• Classrooms: Your classrooms now have their own section in the side menu, with search and a “General” view for sessions that aren’t in a classroom. The Classrooms page has a search box too.
• Teachers: A classroom’s Students tab now shows its teachers beside the students.
• Dashboard: Long lists show five rows, with “View all” to see more.
• Library: Preview a template before you use it, and see what it contains at a glance, such as “2 questions, 1 poll”.
• Sharing: Sharing to Microsoft Teams also copies the join link, and the share dialog shows the address to visit above the session code.
• Link previews: Shared session links show the teacher’s name and picture. Shared library links show a preview card too.
• Low-tech cards: Answer cards print at full paper size, and the scanner reads them from further away.
• AI questions: Answer keys are checked before AI-written questions reach you, and answer options are kept a similar length so the right one doesn’t stand out.
• On your phone: A tidier session header, larger menu buttons, easier library cards, and a side menu that stays open when you follow a link to a new tab.
• Sign-in: Signing in from another region carries on automatically, and an unneeded notice has been removed.
• Account menu: Quick links to “What’s new” and the Signal website, plus Nurture Learn in the side menu for teachers.
• Wording: Organisations are always called “My organisation”, and the sharing option now reads “Share with organisation”.
• Smoother feel: Drawers follow your finger, result bars glide, and motion is reduced if your device is set that way.
• Browser tabs: Each page now has its own tab title.
• Security & reliability: A round of security and reliability improvements.

Fixes

• Editing with AI: Improving or shortening a question no longer reshuffles your answer options.
• Maths: Wide formulas in an explanation no longer stretch the page past the screen.

Nurture Assessments

Fixes

• Canvas: Fixed a blank screen when opening an assignment for some people who aren’t enrolled as a student or teacher.

Starting a session is now a simple, step-by-step flow, and hosts can share classrooms, reuse their best sessions as templates and spot copy-and-pasted answers more easily.

Nurture Signal

New

• Co-hosts: Share a classroom by email, even before a colleague has an account, so they can help run it and all of its sessions.
• Templates: Save a session as a template and start new sessions from it. Share templates privately, with your school or by link.
• Class lists: Add students to a classroom before they join a session. They’re marked “Not joined yet” in the Students tab and linked up automatically once they do.
• Pasted answers: Pasted text in a student’s response is now flagged, so you can see which parts weren’t typed.
• Reasons: Set a minimum and maximum length for the reason students give with quiz and poll answers. Students see a live counter as they type.

Improvements

• Starting a session: A clear three-step flow now asks what you want to do, then how you want to run it, then helps you set it up. Options show whether they run live, self-paced or both.
• Navigation: Hosts and admins get a collapsible side menu that’s quicker to move around. “Templates” is now called “Library”.
• Sharing: The share dialog shows who can join, including guest access and due dates, and puts the sharing options first.
• Library: Sharing options use your school’s own wording, such as “Everyone at my school”.
• Duplicating: Duplicating a session follows the same rules as creating one.
• Pasted answers: Highlights now appear only when you hover over or open the “Pasted” flag, keeping responses easy to read.
• Reasons: An optional reason is no longer held to a minimum length.
• Answer grid: Students who haven’t answered yet now sit at the bottom when sorting by who needs attention.
• Creating sessions: Removed an extra region question from the session set-up flow.
• Link previews: Shared session links always show a tidy preview card in chat apps.

Fixes

• Joining: Fixed students seeing “Session Not Found” after signing in to join a session from a link.
• AI summaries: Fixed the Summarise button offering itself again, while a summary was still being written, after switching questions.

Signing in across regions now happens in a single step, session management is easier from a classroom’s own page, and Nurture Assessments gets a fix for essay generation with several supporting documents attached.

Nurture Signal

Improvements

• Sign-in: Signing in with an email, Microsoft or Google account from a different region now happens in one step, with no need to re-enter your details. You’re also warned upfront if a new session would be created in an unexpected region.
• Verification codes: The code field now shows a numeric keypad on mobile and accepts digits typed in non-Latin numerals.
• Sessions: Edit, duplicate or delete a session directly from its classroom’s session list, not just from the dashboard.
• Sessions: Choose which classroom to file a duplicated session into.
• Curriculum: Document uploads now support files up to 20MB.

Fixes

• Canvas: Fixed an error opening an assignment that isn’t yet connected to a quiz.
• Maths rendering: Fixed some AI-generated maths questions displaying as raw, unformatted notation instead of properly typeset maths.
• Quizzes: Fixed AI-generated quiz questions and feedback favouring the same answer position rather than shuffling fairly.

Nurture Assessments

Fixes

• Assessments: Fixed AI essay assessment generation sometimes failing with a technical error when several supporting documents were attached. If it still happens, a clear message now guides you to trim or split your reference material.

Nurture Signal can now ground AI-generated sessions in your own curriculum documents, and you can finally set your own display name. This week also brings a round of security and reliability improvements, plus fixes across sign-in, Canvas and maths rendering.

Nurture Signal

New

• Curriculum: Attach reference documents to a group, and Nurture Signal grounds AI-generated sessions, questions and feedback in that material instead of general knowledge.
• Profile: Set your own display name, fixing accounts where a school directory appended extra text or mangled your initials.
• Schools: Schools can now show “teacher”, “student” and “classroom” wording throughout the app and in AI-generated content, instead of neutral terms.
• Low-tech mode: Scanning paper answer cards on a device with no rear camera now offers a QR code to open the scanner on your phone instead.
• Account: Choose which region your account’s data is hosted in.

Improvements

• Regions: Your school’s region setting now takes precedence over your own, keeping your account’s data where your school expects it.
• Browser tabs: A session’s browser tab now shows its own name, making it easier to tell multiple open sessions apart.
• Results: Long answer options now show in full in results and distribution charts, instead of being cut off.
• Curriculum: A document that’s ready to use now simply shows “Ready”.
• Security & reliability: A round of security and reliability improvements.

Fixes

• Duplicate sessions: Duplicating a session now carries over every prepared question and check-in, instead of silently dropping some.
• Canvas: Clearer error messages when opening an assignment that’s broken or not yet linked to a quiz.
• Canvas: Fixed Nurture Signal failing to load in Canvas for schools whose account data is hosted in a different region.
• Check-ins: Fixed an error that could appear when adding a note to a quick reaction or check-in answer.
• Maths & answers: Fixed the AI sometimes misjudging genuine working as a guess, and vague answers as genuine working.
• Maths & currency: Fixed written explanations containing dollar amounts rendering as broken formulas instead of plain text.
• Navigation: Fixed the top navigation briefly flickering between “Groups” and “Classrooms” wording.
• Sign-in: Password managers no longer prompt to save or fill the session join code as though it were a password.

Signing in now routes you to the right region automatically, the results report updates live as answers land, and this week brings a round of Canvas reliability fixes.

Nurture Signal

Improvements

• Sign-up: New accounts can host sessions straight away, with no extra step needed to unlock hosting.
• Sign-in: You’re now sent straight to your own region’s sign-in page automatically, instead of needing to choose a region yourself.
• Live sessions: A clear banner now appears if your connection drops mid-session, with an automatic reconnect and countdown, so a dropped connection doesn’t read as a broken app.
• Reports: The results report now updates as answers come in, showing how many responses have arrived rather than only how many have been marked.
• Accessibility: You can pinch to zoom on mobile again, and keyboard users can jump straight to the page content instead of tabbing through the whole menu first.

Fixes

• Canvas: Fixed sign-in and launch errors for schools whose Canvas integration and account data sit in different regions.
• Canvas: Fixed some hosts being unable to properly open their own session when launching from Canvas.
• Canvas: Fixed sign-in sometimes not completing fully when you were redirected outside Canvas partway through.
• Sign-in: Fixed the region notice and sign-in buttons occasionally overlapping on narrower screens.
• Sign-in: Fixed a rare error that could stop sign-in from completing during busy periods.
• Live sessions: Fixed a permission error that could stop a participant’s answers or presence from syncing properly.
• Create session: The Create Session button now shows it’s working while it checks your region, instead of looking unresponsive.

Nurture Assessments

Fixes

• Feedback: Fixed AI-drafted feedback sometimes being attributed to the student instead of the teacher reviewing it.

Session insights now update live while you teach instead of waiting for the session to end, open-answer questions give you more control over how much students write, and a round of fixes makes running Nurture Signal from Canvas more reliable.

Nurture Signal

Improvements

• Live insights: Session insights now update live while a session is running, instead of only appearing once it ends, and sit as a primary toolbar button so they’re easy to find mid-session.
• Open-answer questions: A visible length control (short, medium, long or custom) sets how much students are expected to write. Model answers now read like an actual answer rather than generic advice, and the number of AI-generated success criteria now scales with how complex the question is.
• Sign-in: Actions now route to your school’s own regional deployment automatically, so signing in from a different region no longer risks your data landing in the wrong place.

Fixes

• Canvas: Schools running Canvas on their own domain can now install and launch Nurture Signal. Previously this only worked on Canvas’s standard domain.
• Canvas: A brief Canvas outage no longer locks a session in Draft or shows “we couldn’t open this assignment”: sessions recover once Canvas is reachable again.
• Canvas: Sessions launched from Canvas keep their Start, Pause and End controls, instead of sometimes losing them.
• Canvas: The Cancel/Next footer no longer gets cut off when creating an assignment from Canvas’s side panel.
• Quizzes: A typed answer no longer carries over into the next question’s answer box.
• Recommendations: The “Nurture recommends” guidance card no longer splits or strands words at the end of a line.

This week answers a request we heard directly from hosts: you can now set exactly how many questions and check-ins a session generates, instead of the number being worked out from the session length. There’s also a new right/wrong grid for reading a live session at a glance.

Nurture Signal

New

• Question count: Set exactly how many questions and check-ins a session generates, choosing the number for each type across live sessions and self-paced quizzes. Type the number straight in rather than stepping it up one click at a time. Previously a live session ignored the number you asked for and worked it out from the session length, so a request for ten questions could come back with two or three.
• Live insights: A new right/wrong grid on the live question dashboard shows one row per participant and one column per question, for a fast read of who got what wrong without running a self-paced quiz to see that level of detail.

Improvements

• AI generation: Now runs on a newer AI model that can also be hosted in Australian data centres, so an Australian school’s data can stay onshore.
• Sign-in: Verification codes now submit the moment they’re complete, so pasting the code or typing the last digit verifies it for you, and choosing your sign-in region is now a quiet line rather than a form field.
• Quiz generation: The answer key stays hidden until a quiz has finished generating, so a host no longer sees the wrong option briefly ticked while the question streams in.
• AI insights: Low-effort answers like “idk” are now kept out of AI insights, so summaries reflect what participants actually wrote.
• Security & reliability: Ongoing behind-the-scenes work to keep accounts, sessions and personal data secure.

Fixes

• Live sessions: When a participant had answered every question released so far, the “All done!” message made it look like the whole session had finished, so people were closing the tab and missing the questions the host opened next. They now see a clear “waiting for the next question” state instead, and stay in the session.
• Guest sign-in: A failed guest sign-in now recovers instead of leaving the join page hanging.
• Guess insights: The half-credit note now names the correct guesses and lines up with the Explanations chart.
• Host dashboard: The live dashboard no longer re-renders on every presence update, so the share dialog and its buttons stay responsive.

Big week for Nurture Signal: it now works inside Canvas, and quizzes gained a new open-ended question type with AI-assisted marking.

Nurture Signal

New

• Canvas: Nurture Signal now works inside Canvas — sign in, run live sessions and sync grades without ever leaving your course.
• Open-ended questions: Add write-in-your-own-words questions to quizzes and assessments. Every host gets a model answer shown alongside each response; premium hosts can also set AI-checked marking criteria and get personalised feedback on each answer.
• AI usage page: See how much AI you’ve used on a new dedicated page, and get the specific reason if an AI request fails instead of a generic error.
• Canvas setup: Canvas admins can now connect Nurture in a couple of clicks, or by pasting a single link — no more manual setup.
• Microsoft-only sign-in: Schools can now be set up so every account signs in through their own Microsoft directory only.

Improvements

• Sign-in: Signing in with a verified Google or Microsoft account now links straight to your existing Nurture account instead of showing an error.
• Sign-in: Shows a clear loading message while you’re redirected, instead of the page appearing to freeze.
• Sign-in emails: Verification code emails now come from a dedicated address, with a properly branded plain-text version.
• Canvas: The session-creation panel now fills the height of the Canvas tray, instead of leaving space at the bottom.
• Canvas sessions: Everyone in a Canvas course can now see the course’s published sessions, and instructors can start a new one directly from the course view.
• Participant names: Locked once you join a session through a verified Canvas sign-in, so the roster stays accurate.
• Live session composer: Add a Reflection prompt the same way as any other content, through the single “Add content” button.
• Homepage: Sign-in, sign-up and the join-a-session form now appear immediately, without a loading flash.
• Security & reliability: Ongoing behind-the-scenes improvements to keep accounts, sessions and personal data secure.

Fixes

• Quiz maths: Mathematical formulas in a chosen answer now render properly instead of showing the raw formula text.
• Admin: The Live view no longer lists self-paced assessments as if they were happening right now.
• Sign-in: The “resend code” countdown is now accurate and can’t be skipped early.

Reviewing responses just got smarter: Nurture Signal now flags when an explanation looks like a guess or was pasted in, and counts guesses as half a correct answer so results reflect real understanding.

Nurture Assessments

Improvements

• Feedback: Feedback comments can now be up to 500 words long, up from 300, for when a longer note is needed.
• Teams app: Removed the floating support chat button for a cleaner workspace.

Nurture Signal

New

• Explanation insights: See when a participant’s written explanation looks like a guess or was pasted in rather than their own words, with guesses now counted as half a correct answer so recommendations reflect real understanding.
• Maths & LaTeX: Write and preview proper mathematical notation in questions, options and explanations, rendered in the platform’s own typeface so it reads like the rest of the page.
• Become a host: Share one link and it takes people straight to sign-up, sign-in or their dashboard, depending on where they’re up to — and when the link carries someone’s email, the form arrives pre-filled and ready to go.

Improvements

• Avatars: Anyone without a profile photo now gets a distinctive coloured initials avatar instead of a generic placeholder, shown consistently everywhere.
• Quiz reflection: Now talks about your “score” instead of your “grade”, for plainer language.
• AI session generation: If a session fails to generate with AI, you’ll now see the actual reason and a reference to quote if you contact support, instead of a generic error.

Fixes

• AI agent connections: Fixed an error that could stop an AI agent from connecting to your account.
• Quiz explanations: AI-written explanations now refer to answers by their wording instead of confusing option numbers.
• Self-paced quiz: Fixed a rare error some participants saw if they answered right as the host moved the session on; it’s now handled quietly.