Here is the link to create a syllabus assistant for your own course in about twenty minutes — no download, no account, no code.
How It Works
- Open the setup page and paste in your syllabus. That alone gives you a working assistant students can search in plain English.
- Fill in whichever sections you like - late work, office hours, attendance, your AI policy, where to get help. Each one you fill in becomes a cleaner, more direct answer. Anything you skip is simply left out.
- Press the button. A SCORM package downloads, ready to upload to Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle or D2L. There is also a plain web page version if you would rather not use SCORM at all.
Nothing to install, no account to make, no key to paste, and nothing that can run up a bill.
It Will Not Make Things Up
This is a lookup tool, not a generative one. Every answer is either text you typed or a passage from the syllabus you pasted. Where you left something blank, it says so and gives the student your email address rather than inventing a policy you never wrote.
That is the design rather than a limitation. A SCORM package runs inside the student's browser, so a generative version would need an API key sitting in a file every student can read. This one has nothing to steal and nothing to hallucinate.
What It Does on Its Own
If a Student Is in Trouble
Wording that sounds like a crisis stops the syllabus lookup and offers the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, along with whatever campus counseling you entered. This works even if you leave the support section empty - but it is much better if you fill it in.
If a Student Asks It to Do the Work
It refuses, and points them at your AI policy and at tutoring instead.
What Students Can Ask It
It covers 43 topics and understands the way students actually type, not the headings on your syllabus. All of these find the right answer:
- “can I turn it in late?”
- “I missed class, what do I do?”
- “what’s an 89?”
- “can I use ChatGPT?”
- “I have ADHD and need extra time”
- “do you drop the lowest grade?”
- “I’m failing, what do I do?”
Anything the topics miss, it searches in the full text of the syllabus you pasted.
Accessibility. Built to WCAG 2.1 AA. It works by keyboard alone, answers are announced to screen readers as they arrive, every control is labelled, contrast passes in both light and dark mode, and it holds up on a phone and at 200% zoom.
Privacy
The setup page does all its work inside your own browser - what you type is never sent anywhere, and the package is assembled on your computer. The finished assistant has no access to your students, your roster or your gradebook. It does not know who is asking, and nothing a student types leaves their own browser.
Sharing It with a Colleague
Send them this page, or download the setup file and email it to them. It is one self-contained file - their course, their answers, their package. Nothing else needs to travel with it.
Two Things Worth Remembering Later
- Next semester, when your syllabus changes, load your saved answers back into the setup page, edit the dates, download a fresh package and upload it over the old one in Blackboard or whichever system you use. The package does not update itself. This only works if you saved your answers when you built it — without that file it means retyping everything, so it is worth the ten seconds.
- If you ever want to change the chatbot itself — how it answers, what it covers — that has to be done another way. Get in touch with Stacie Hargis at Middlesex Community College and she can help.
Made at Middlesex Community College for anyone who wants it. The assistant you build is yours.