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Instructors use SimCare’s assignment system to assign AI client cases to students, set deadlines, and track completion. Assignments live inside Classes — each class holds a roster of students and a set of assignments.

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Finding your classes

Go to /classes from the top navigation. You’ll see all the classes you teach. Each class card shows the class image, the number of assignments and members, and a Canvas badge if it’s connected to your LMS. Click a class to open it. Inside a class you have four tabs:

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Joining a class as a co-instructor

From /classes, click Join class as teacher in the top right and paste the join code from the class owner.

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Creating an assignment

From the Assignments tab inside a class, click Create assignment and choose what type:
  • Case — an AI client simulation
  • Quiz — multiple choice, true/false, and written-answer questions
  • Document — a reading (PDF, DOCX, URL) students must review, or a file they must upload
  • Peer review — students review a classmate’s case submission. See Peer review assignments for the full walkthrough.
The case assignment builder has six steps:
1

Avatar

Browse and select the AI client. This includes built-in SimCare cases, faculty-created cases from your school, and any custom clients you’ve built. Use Find clients with AI to describe what you want to practice and let the AI suggest matching clients.
2

Details

Set the assignment title and any instructions students should see. Add Learning Outcomes — these power the competency reporting in your Analytics tab.
3

Settings

Configure the assignment behavior:
4

Assessments

Pick written tasks students complete after the session, before they can see feedback:
  • Problem Statement
  • Differential Diagnosis
  • Safety Planning
  • Risk Assessment
  • Treatment Planning
  • SOAP Note
  • Reflection
5

Evaluation

Choose how the AI scores the session. You have three mutually exclusive options:
  • General Counseling Skills Assessment (default) — case-specific feedback generated for this client.
  • Microskills — turn off the general assessment toggle to reveal a tiered list of counseling skills (for example, Basic Attending & Empathy → Minimal Encouragers). Pick the skills and individual microskills you want evaluated; each is scored against a shared rubric and checklist. Click Preview on any skill to see the rubric students will be graded against.
  • Custom evaluation template — pick a saved rubric/checklist template from your program. Click Preview to open the template in a new tab before assigning. If none is selected, the default case-specific feedback format is used.
Microskills and custom templates can’t be used together on the same assignment.
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Evaluation

Choose how the AI scores student performance. Pick one of the modes below — they’re mutually exclusive.General Counseling Skills Assessment (default)Leave the General Counseling Skills Assessment toggle on to use SimCare’s default case-specific feedback. The AI evaluates the session against the standard counseling competencies tied to the client you picked.MicroskillsTurn the toggle off to scope feedback to specific microskills. You’ll see SimCare’s skill taxonomy organized as Tier → Skill → Microskill. Enable the skills you want assessed and, if you only care about a subset, toggle individual microskills underneath. Use this when an assignment targets a specific competency (for example, reflective listening or open-ended questions) and you want feedback to ignore the rest.Saved evaluation templateSelect a saved evaluation template to score students against your own rubrics and checklists:
  • Rubrics — criteria scored on a column scale (for example, Excellent / Good / Needs Work). Each cell carries display text for students and hidden evaluation instructions for the AI.
  • Checklists — pass/fail items each worth a fixed point value.
  • Theory analysis — enabled per template; when on, the AI also analyzes the session through the theory tied to the template.
Click Preview next to the selected template to open the student-facing view in a new tab.Templates can be marked public (available to every program) or scoped to specific programs via program access. Only templates your program has access to appear in the picker.Selecting a saved template hides the microskills picker and replaces the default per-case feedback in the next step.
7

Feedback

Choose which feedback components appear on student Case Reviews:
  • Annotated Transcript
  • Basic Skills (Evaluation Checklist)
  • Theory Analysis (auto-selected if you chose a theory)
  • Checklist
  • Advanced Skills
Pick a therapy theory for Theory Analysis — over 30 are supported across Beginner, Intermediate, and Difficult tiers (Motivational Interviewing, CBT, Narrative, Gestalt, Adlerian, Bowen Family Systems, Strategic, Structural, Solution-Focused, DBT, Psychoanalytic, and more).When a saved evaluation template is selected in the previous step, this step is reduced to the theory picker — the template controls the rubric and checklist sections automatically.

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Previewing as a student

Open any assignment URL with ?preview=true&assignment=<id> (or use the Preview action) to run the case yourself without affecting student data. A purple Teacher Preview banner appears throughout the session.

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Follow-up / longitudinal cases

Follow-ups let students return to the same client across multiple sessions. Each follow-up is tied to a parent assignment (the earlier session) and a scenario (the clinical situation the client is in when they come back).

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Turning on follow-up mode

In the case assignment builder’s Avatar step, toggle This is a follow-up after selecting a case. Two new fields appear:
  • Parent assignment — the previous assignment in this class that students must complete first.
  • Follow-up scenario — the storyline for this session.
The assignment is automatically labeled Follow Up #N in the class assignment table for both teachers and students, so the order is clear at a glance.

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Picking a scenario

Each case template ships with a set of numbered scenarios (1, 2, 3…) plus any custom scenarios your school has built (shown as C1, C2…). The picker shows a short summary and a one-line clinical goal for each.
  • Scenarios already used by another follow-up in the same class show a Used badge so you don’t accidentally duplicate them.
  • Scenario 6 is reserved as a termination session — selecting it auto-sets the session type to Termination.
  • The session type defaults to Intervention on follow-ups (since intake has already happened).

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Creating a custom scenario

If none of the built-in scenarios fit, select Not a fit? Create your own under the scenario picker. The Follow-up builder opens in a new tab.
1

Describe the situation

Write 20–3,000 characters describing what has changed for the client since the previous session — life events, symptom changes, relationship updates, anything the AI client should be aware of.
2

Generate

Select Generate scenario. SimCare uses AI to structure your free-text into the three fields a scenario needs:
  • A 3–5 word summary
  • A one-sentence clinical goal
  • A 100–120 word vignette that primes the AI client
Your draft is saved to your school library so any teacher creating a follow-up on the same case can reuse it.
3

Return to the assignment

Close the tab to return to the assignment builder. Your new scenario appears in the picker tagged C1, C2, and so on.
Each case template can hold up to 10 custom scenarios. Delete ones you no longer need from the Follow-up builder.

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Viewing submissions

Each student row on the Assignments tab shows a status badge: Click a student row to open their submission. You’ll see the session recording, the AI feedback, and a grading panel.

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Grading

Grading runs through the same Case Review you see as a student, with an extra Grading step:
  • Add instructor comments anywhere on the annotated transcript — they coexist with AI comments and are saved as a draft until you publish
  • Enter a numeric grade (0–100) and a written feedback summary
  • Click Publish to release everything to the student
For high-volume grading use Bulk Grading at /grading/bulk-case (or /grading/bulk-quiz for quizzes) — review and publish many submissions in one pass.

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Releasing feedback to the whole class

If you held feedback for instructor review, you can release it for all students at once using the Bulk Release option on the assignment.

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Class analytics

The Analytics tab on your class shows:
  • Completion rates by assignment
  • Grade distribution
  • Per-student progress view
  • Competency performance (if learning outcomes are tagged)
Use the period filter to focus on a specific date range. Export the full dataset as CSV or generate a PDF report for individual students or the whole class.