What is Draft Mode?
Students write in a supervised editor, so you see what they can produce themselves and how they use sources.
In Draft Mode, students write an assignment or extended response in a writing editor inside Thinking Mode, usually in class. You choose how much outside support they can draw on, and you see how each piece was written, not just the finished text.
Use it when you need a supervised first draft, an in-class essay or a writing checkpoint, without handwriting on paper. It also works as the first half of a two-step assessment with Defence Mode.
Choose how much support students get
When you create a task and choose Draft mode, pick one option under How much support should students draw on?
Independent Writing captures what a student can write on their own. They write in a full-screen editor, can’t paste from outside sources, and are locked out if they leave until you let them back in.
Scaffolded Writing lets students use outside sources, as long as they attribute them. When they paste text, they choose to quote it directly or paraphrase it in their own words. A paraphrase that stays too close to the original is rejected, and before submitting they answer a short AI question on each passage they paraphrased. You choose which of these checks apply on the Customisation step.
For plain writing with no checks, choose Scaffolded Writing, then on Customisation turn on I want to customise this task and set Provide writing scaffolds to Off.
Word and time limits
By default a Draft task has no word or time limit. To set them, turn on I want to customise this task on the Customisation step.
Word limits: a Word target (minimum), a Word limit (maximum), or both.
Time limit: students see a countdown that starts when they open the task. At the deadline, Gentle stop warns them and lets them finish, and Hard stop submits their work.
The Accessibility step sets spellcheck, which is on by default, and the starting reading and writing font.
While students write
Work saves as students type, so a closed laptop or a lock-out doesn’t lose anything.
Students can go back to an earlier point with the Earlier versions button in the editor. You can also look at and restore a student’s earlier versions from their draft page.
For maths and science, the Equation editor button in the toolbar opens a maths and chemistry editor with an on-screen keyboard and a short tutorial. Students don’t need to know any special notation, and equations come through as real equations in the Word download.
Publishing and opening the task
When finalising a Draft Mode, the Student Access setting allows you to require students to either wait until you open the task or immediately access your task once it has been published.
When a task is published, but closed, students can use the access code, but will not be able to start the task until you open it.
You can open the task by selecting it in the task list. There will be an obvious banner at the top of the screen for you you to open the task to get started with your class.
What you see afterwards
Open a student from the task page to see their draft and word count. From there you can:
look at and restore their Earlier versions;
in Scaffolded Writing, review each paraphrase next to its source, and read the Mini defence transcripts;
add Written Feedback and, if the task uses a rubric, a rubric score;
click Download as DOCX to save the draft as a Word document.
To download every draft at once, click Download all drafts on the task page. Students can download their own draft with Download DOCX on their results page.
Linking a draft to a Defence Mode task
On the Link Defence step, you can pair the Draft task with a Defence Mode task. Students later upload their finished work to the Defence task, and the tutor focuses its questions on what they added after the draft. See How do linked Draft and Defence Mode tasks work?