By creating an instructor account on Essay Coach, you agree to the following terms.
1. What Essay Coach Is
Essay Coach is a tool that gives students iterative, AI-generated feedback on essay answers by comparing their work against a hidden model answer you provide. It is offered as-is, without warranty, by Douglas Yu, and is not an official product or service of the University of East Anglia.
This is experimental software supporting an experimental teaching method. The current purpose of releasing this software is to test whether providing granular, directional feedback on exam-style essay answers is a teaching method that students will even accept. If we jump this first hurdle, we will think about formal studies. By using this tool, you are participating in that evaluation, and features, feedback quality, and availability may change as the method is tested and refined.
2. Acceptable Use
You agree not to:
- Upload student data beyond what is necessary for the tool to function (e.g. do not include full names, student ID numbers, or other identifying information in questions, rubrics, or model answers)
- Use the tool to process confidential or legally protected student records beyond what your own institution's policies permit
- Attempt to bypass, manipulate, or abuse the underlying AI system (including prompt injection or attempts to extract system prompts)
- Use the service in a way that imposes excessive load on shared infrastructure (e.g. automated bulk submissions unrelated to genuine instructional use)
3. Your Content
- You retain ownership of the questions, prompts, model answers, and rubrics you create.
- We will not reuse, share, or repurpose your content for purposes other than operating the tool for your students, without your permission.
- You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to use any content you upload (e.g. it is your own work, or you have permission to use it).
4. Student Data
- Student answers submitted through the tool are stored to enable the revision history feature. Questions, model answers, rubrics, student answers, and generated feedback are stored in a database hosted by Replit.com, within the EU.
- Student answers and your model answers/rubrics are sent to Anthropic's API to generate feedback. This is subject to Anthropic's own data handling terms. We do not know where Anthropic's servers are located, but a good guess is the US.
- Infrastructure may change. As part of ongoing development, we may change the web hosting service (currently Replit.com) and/or the AI provider (currently Anthropic). One possible future provider is OpenRouter, a service that routes requests across multiple underlying AI models, transparently to the end user. We will try to notify you if and when infrastructure changes occur, but this is not guaranteed. Because of this uncertainty, student accounts are anonymous by design and we ask instructors not to include identifying student information in questions, rubrics, or model answers.
- We do not sell or share student data with third parties beyond what is necessary to generate feedback (i.e. the AI provider).
- Student answers are retained to support the revision-history feature. There is currently no function to automatically delete them, given that student accounts are anonymous by design.
- You are responsible for complying with your own institution's and jurisdiction's data protection requirements (e.g. FERPA in the US, GDPR in the EU/UK) when using this tool with your students, and for confirming whether your department requires sign-off before using an AI tool with a live class or sending anonymous student work to a third-party API. You are responsible for confirming this tool meets applicable local requirements.
5. Costs
- Access is currently provided free of charge.
- We reserve the right to introduce usage limits or ask instructors to pay for API usage if usage grows beyond what we can support.
6. No Warranty on Feedback Quality
- AI-generated feedback may be inaccurate, incomplete, or inconsistent. It is not a substitute for instructor judgment or grading and should not be used for summative coursework.
- We make no guarantee that feedback aligns with any particular grading standard, rubric interpretation, or pedagogical outcome.
7. Availability and Termination
- The service is provided on a best-effort basis with no uptime guarantee.
- We may suspend or terminate any account at our discretion, including for violation of these terms or misuse of the service.
- We may discontinue the service at any time, with reasonable notice where possible.
8. Liability
- The tool is provided "as is," without warranty of any kind.
- Neither Douglas Yu nor the University of East Anglia is liable for any damages arising from use of the tool, including but not limited to data loss, service interruption, or reliance on AI-generated feedback.
9. Changes to These Terms
We may update these terms from time to time. Continued use of the tool after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.
10. Contact
Questions about these terms: douglas.yu@uea.ac.uk