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Sci-AI Student Guide · knowledgewithai.com · 1
SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY WITH AI
Student Guide
Everything you can see and do on the Sci-AI platform with a student account.
For student accounts
knowledgewithai.com · UC Merced · August 2026
1. Before you start
1.1 What this platform is
Sci-AI (knowledgewithai.com) is where your course keeps its lab materials and its practice questions. Each
lab gathers everything for one topic on a single page: the prelab you do with an AI tutor, a simulation, the
documents, and a bank of retrieval-practice questions. The site records what you did, so your instructor can
see who is keeping up and so you can see your progress.
Two things are worth knowing before anything else. Practice here is formative: it is designed to make the
material stick, not to grade you. And the work is spaced on purpose: short sessions on many days beat one
long session, and the site is built to reward exactly that.
1.2 Your account
Your account has the student role. It gives you every lab your instructor has released to your class, your own
practice and progress, and control over the data an AI assistant writes about you. It does not give you
anything belonging to the teaching side of the site.
You can You cannot
Open every lab released to your class Enroll yourself in a class
Run prelabs with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini See another student's progress or answers
Run simulations and retrieval practice Open the instructor guide, lesson plan, or self-check
answer key
See your mastery, streak, and leaderboard position Create or edit labs, files, or practice questions
See what the AI tutor recorded about you See class dashboards or rosters
Download or delete that AI-written data Change your own role

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Not in a class yet? Enrollment is done by your instructor, not by you. If the sidebar shows no class, give
your instructor the username you signed in with and ask to be added.
1.3 Signing in
1. Go to knowledgewithai.com and click Enter the full site or Open the retrieval tool.
2. If you are a UC Merced student, use Sign in with your @ucmerced.edu email or Continue with Google
to use your Google account.
3. Otherwise enter the username and password you signed up with. Usernames are lowercase — capitals
you type get folded down, so case never matters.
4. No account yet? Click Create an account, then UC Merced student? to sign up with your
@ucmerced.edu address. A verification link arrives by email and expires in 24 hours; there is a Resend
verification email button if it does not turn up. Continuing with a UC Merced Google account does the
same job without the email step.
5. Forgot your password? The link under the password box emails you a reset link. It works once and
expires in an hour, and it can only reach you if your account carries an email address — an account an
admin created by hand does not, so ask an admin to reset that one.
Signing up is not the same as being enrolled. A UC Merced sign-up (campus email or campus Google
account) lands as a student and can be added to a class straight away. Any other sign-up lands as a guest,
which can practise but cannot be enrolled until an admin promotes it. Either way enrolment is your
instructor's job — send them the username you signed in with.
Figure 1 — The UC Merced sign-in page.
2. Getting around
2.1 The sidebar

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The left sidebar is the same on every page. As a student it holds:
• Home — your landing page: mastery on your most recent topic, your classes, your streak and this
week's dots, the newest lab released to you, a shortcut into practice, and your badges.
• General Documents — course-wide handouts that belong to no single lab: the syllabus, the lab
schedule, and anything else your instructor publishes there.
• Classes — the classes you are enrolled in. Clicking one narrows the Labs group below it to that class's
labs.
• Labs — every lab released to you, numbered. Click the word Labs to collapse or expand the group.
• Practice — Progress, Post-class engagement, and the Retrieval Tool.
Below those sits a Help link, your day-streak pill, your name and role, Sign out, and small links to Connections
& data and Privacy. A padlock beside a lab means your instructor has paused it for the class; it will reopen.
Figure 2 — Student home.
2.2 Your classes and labs
A class page lists only the labs your instructor has released to it, in the order they set. Everything you need
for a lab is reachable from there, and the same labs appear in the sidebar so you can move between them
without going back.

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Figure 3 — A class page. The labs your instructor has released, in their order.
3. Working a lab
3.1 The lab page
Opening a lab gives you a grid of cards. Which cards appear depends on what your instructor attached, and
the small numbers in the corner are the order they intend you to work in: usually the 1.x cards before class
and the 2.x cards after. The numbering is derived from the lab's own Student Guide, so a lab can have more
than two steps, and a step holding a single card is numbered plainly (1, 2) rather than 1.1. Supporting cards
such as the Analysis guide, Student guide, AI grading prompt, and Supplemental Files carry no number and sit
after the numbered ones.
The cards you may see:
Card What it is
Prelab Read this first. Runs as a session with an AI tutor.
Self check Questions to test yourself against before class.
Simulation An interactive model you manipulate in a new tab.
Retrieval The lab's practice question bank.
Postlab The after-class page. Opening it starts the lab's 30-minute clock.
Analysis guide How to work through the lab's analysis.
Student guide The lab handout.
AI grading prompt Download-only. Feed it to your own chatbot to grade your self-check.
Activity · Video tutorial ·
Research paper
Additional files with information to be used in the lesson.

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Card What it is
Supplemental Files Datasets, spreadsheets, and other optional extra files to further your
understanding of the topic.
Figure 4 — A lab landing page, as a student sees it.
3.2 The prelab, with an AI tutor
The prelab is a conversation, not a worksheet. You open the prelab document, hand it to a chatbot, and work
through it with the chatbot as tutor. What the tutor learns about you gets written back to your Prelab
progress page.
• ChatGPT — open the course's custom GPT from the button on the page. It syncs automatically; nothing
to upload. Log into ChatGPT first or the link will not open it.
• Claude — add the course MCP connector inside Claude once. After that it syncs automatically too. The
page has a How to connect Claude button.
• Gemini — cannot write back on its own. Finish the prelab, download the JSON summary the chatbot
gives you, then upload it on your Prelab progress page.
Either way you can also View or Download the prelab PDF itself, and the page marks the document Done
once the prelab session history is written back to the website or manually inputted via the JSON file.

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Figure 5 — The Prelab page. Pick your chatbot, then open the document.
3.3 The simulation
Simulations open in their own tab so you have the full screen for changing variables and reading off results. A
simulation marks itself complete after a set number of minutes of actual work. The clock moves while you are
interacting with it, not while it sits open in a background tab.
Figure 6 — A postlab simulation. It opens in a new tab.
3.4 The postlab and the 30-minute clock
Every lab carries a target of 30 minutes of post-class work, and opening the Postlab card is what starts that
lab's clock. Nothing counts before you open it.
Retrieval practice and the simulation both feed the same 30 minutes, so you can move between them freely.
20 minutes of practice and 10 of simulation finishes the lab just as well as 30 of either. Time only accrues
while you are actually working; it pauses if you leave a page sitting open for 2 minutes or longer.

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Launch practice from the lab. Minutes are banked against the lab you launched from. Starting practice
from the lab's Retrieval card or from the Postlab page is what makes it count toward that lab.
Figure 7 — The Postlab page. Opening it starts the clock; both activities feed the same 30 minutes.
3.5 Grading your own self-check
The AI grading prompt card is download-only. Download the prompt, then upload it to your own chatbot
together with your completed self-check analysis document, and ask the chatbot to grade your work against
it. Nothing you do there is sent back to the site.
4. Retrieval practice
4.1 Starting a session
Sidebar → Retrieval Tool. Two ways in:
• Mixed practice — this session draws from every lab released to you, shuffled so consecutive questions
come from different labs. Recently released labs, and labs you have not practised yet, come up more
often. This is the better session; interleaving beats drilling.
• Practice specific topics — Click Choose topics, select the labs you want, and practice only those. Use it
when you already know what you need to redo, work on, or get better at.
In more than one class? A Class card appears above both options with a button per class. Practice counts
toward the class you pick, and a session never mixes classes — so check the right one is selected before
you start.
A session is 20 questions plus up to 5 additional review questions. There is no bonus for finishing and no
penalty for stopping halfway. Points attach to answers, so everything you reach is banked whatever you do
next.

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Figure 8 — The Retrieval Tool.
4.2 Answering a question
Multiple-choice questions you simply answer. Written questions ask you to explain the reasoning in full
sentences, and give you two buttons: Final answer and Guess.
Choose Guess when you are unsure. Still write your best guess, including what is confusing you and how you
are trying to reason it out. A guess that turns out at least 65% correct is promoted to a final answer and earns
full points. A weaker one earns no points, but still counts as an answer, still updates your review schedule
and mastery, and still counts toward your streak.
Figure 9 — A written question. Answer in your own words before you reveal.
4.3 The feedback

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Submitting your answer tells if you are correct or not, an acceptable answer, and why you were rated the
way you were. Then schedules when you will see the question again. You never choose the rating; the AI
(Claude Haiku 4.5) decides it.
Rating Points What earns it
easy 3 Correct, and clearly quicker than you usually take on that question.
good 2 Correct at roughly your normal pace.
hard 1 Correct but slower than usual on a choice question, or partially correct on a written
answer.
again 0 Not correct. Never negative, and the question comes back sooner.
Speed only decides the rating on multiple-choice and true/false questions, and it is measured against your
own usual time on that exact question, never against other students. Written answers are rated on content
instead: again if the core idea is wrong or missing, hard if it is there but incomplete, good if it is correct with
everything required, easy if it is fully correct and precise. On calculations, a number within 2% of the
reference counts as correct, and showing an equation or a substitution earns at least partial credit even when
the final result is wrong.
When a written answer comes back badly wrong, you get one short follow-up question you must answer
before moving on. It cannot change your score, the rating was decided the moment you submitted. It is there
because writing out where the gap is, while you can still feel it, is what makes the next attempt stick. A rough
session stops asking after 8 of them, and a partly-right answer, a wrong multiple-choice answer, and a Guess
never trigger one.
Answers that don't count. A very short written response with no attempt at the question in it — "idk",
keyboard mash, or the question typed back — is voided: no points, no mastery change, and it does not
count toward the session. Another question takes its place. Do that more than five times in one session
and the session ends without earning a streak day. Anything 8 words or longer always counts, so being
wrong while putting the effort in never voids an answer.

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Figure 10 — Feedback after you submit.
4.4 Points, streaks, and the leaderboard
Your weekly score is the points from every question you answered this week, plus 3 points for each day of
your current streak. The streak bonus is worth 21 points a week on its own, which is the whole point of it:
showing up on small days beats one heavy session.
• A day counts toward your streak when you finish a session on it. Any lab counts, and a second session
the same day does not extend it further.
• You get one automatic freeze per week. Miss one day and your run survives; miss two in a row and it
breaks.
• The board runs Monday to Monday, Pacific time, and resets on its own. Finished weeks are frozen and
kept under Weekly results.
• Only the class you launched from is credited, and only course practice counts. Open practice on the
guest retrieval tool scores nothing.
• Classes compete on average score per enrolled student, so a classmate who never practices counts as a
zero in your class's average.
5. Your progress
Sidebar → Progress is the hub. It forks into two views; what you recall in practice, and what the AI tutor
learned about how you study, and carries the one number neither of them shows: overall mastery per lesson,
blending your prelab work (30%) with your retrieval recall (70%).
5.1 Retrieval progress

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Open retrieval progress gives you mastery out of 100 for every topic, a Focus next card that ranks your
weakest topics with a link straight into practice for each, a five-week activity heat-map, your class
leaderboard, and View my retrieval history for every session and answer you have given.
The leaderboard shows the top 25 and adds your own row underneath if you are outside it. Ties share a rank.
Figure 11 — Retrieval progress: mastery by topic, and Focus next.
5.2 Prelab progress
Open prelab progress is what the AI tutor recorded about you: topic mastery per lab, a mind map of the
concepts you covered and how they link, and notes on your personalization, learning style, and sticking
points. There is an Overall Progress tab and a Lab Specific Progress tab.
If your chatbot cannot write back on its own, Import JSON summary is where you upload the file it gave you.
If the AI chatbot did not give you a JSON file type “Can you give me the JSON file so I can download it, and put
it into the website.”
Under the profile, Download stored history (JSON) gives you the same five sections back in the shape this
page re-imports, and Download stored history (PDF) gives you a readable copy to keep. Both cover the
Overall Progress view.
This page is private. Only you, the admins, and your teacher sees it. The same data renders at a
shareable link built on an anonymous alias, but only if you choose to hand that link out.

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Figure 12 — Prelab progress. Private to you.
5.3 Post-class engagement
This page is the 30-minute clock for every lab in one place: how many minutes you have banked on each, split
between retrieval and simulation, with buttons straight into either. If you are in more than one class, a tab
strip separates them, but the minutes are per lab, so a lab assigned to two of your classes shows the same
total under both.
Figure 13 — Post-class engagement, lab by lab.
6. Your account and your data
6.1 Connections & data

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The Connections & data link at the bottom of the sidebar lists every app you have connected to Sci-AI: a
custom GPT, the Claude connector, with the permissions it was granted, when you connected it, and a
Revoke button.
The same page carries two controls that are yours alone:
• Download my AI data (JSON) and Delete my AI data, everything an AI host has written about you,
being session summaries and struggle signals. Deleting it does not touch your practice history or your
account.
• Sign out everywhere else, signing in on a new device leaves the old one signed in for up to 30 days. If
you used a shared or lost computer, end those sessions here. You stay signed in on the one you are
using.
Changing your password disconnects your apps. A password reset — yours through Forgot your
password, or one an admin runs for you — ends every signed-in session and revokes every connected app
at the same time. Reconnect ChatGPT or Claude afterwards, or your next prelab will not sync back.
6.2 Built-in Help
The Help link opens a searchable list of step-by-step guides written for your account, grouped into Practice,
Progress, Labs & materials, Classes, and Account & data. Each expands into numbered steps, and Show me
walks you through them on the real page. Help explains how to use the site; it never shows answers to lab or
practice questions.
Figure 14 — The Help page.
6.3 Signing out
Sign out sits at the bottom of the sidebar, under your name and role. It ends the session on that device only.
7. If something looks wrong

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What you see What it means
No classes in the sidebar Your instructor has not enrolled you yet. Send them the username you
signed in with.
A padlock beside a lab Your instructor has paused that lab for your class. It is deliberate, and it
will reopen.
A lab has no Retrieval card No questions have been attached to it yet.
Your streak reads 0 after practicing A session has to be finished to count, and voided answers can end a
session without earning the day.
No weekly results yet That card only appears once a week has closed and been recorded.
Minutes not moving The clock only runs while you are interacting, and only after you have
opened the lab's Postlab card.
Appendix — Glossary
Term Meaning
Bank The pool of retrieval-practice questions attached to one lab.
Focus next The card ranking your weakest unfinished topics, each linking into practice for it.
Guess mode A written answer submitted as an attempt. Promoted to a final answer at 65%
correct or better.
Mastery A 0–100 score. Per lesson it blends prelab work (30%) with retrieval recall (70%). A
lesson carrying only one of the two halves — no question bank, or no prelab — is
scored on that half alone, out of 100.
Mixed practice A session interleaved across every lab released to you, rather than drilling one.
Post-class engagement The 30-minute per-lab target of retrieval practice and simulation combined,
counted only while you are interacting.
Prelab progress What the AI tutor recorded about how you study. Private to you.
Rating easy / good / hard / again, decided by the AI (Claude Haiku 4.5) from your answer,
worth 3 / 2 / 1 / 0 points.
Streak freeze One automatic cover per week for a single missed day.
Badges Eight markers on your home page in three ladders: 7- and 30-day streaks; first,
10th and 20th session this term; and first, 5th and all topics mastered.
General Documents The sidebar page for course-wide handouts — syllabus, lab schedule, and
anything else published there — rather than material attached to one lab.