What happens to learning between start and submit?
Stackle fills those gaps. Every Canvas and Brightspace page becomes an evidence collection point. Every assignment becomes a window into the learning that led there. The thinking that develops between Week 2 and Week 11 - the revisions, the shifts in understanding, the moments where something clicks - becomes part of the record.
The endpoint submission doesn't change. What changes is everything the institution can now see before it arrives.
When I saw the engagement data - students voluntarily returning to their journals, revising their thinking without being prompted - I knew this was different from anything we'd tried before.
The Process
Three steps. Complete visibility.
01
Embed
Place activities where learning happens.
Stackle activities are inserted directly into Canvas and Brightspace pages using the Activity Builder. Educators choose from nine purpose-built activity types, each designed for a specific evidence need - from a single locked-response knowledge check to a semester-long progressive journal.
Activities sit inline within existing course content. A student reading through a Week 3 module page encounters a Stackle activity as a natural part of the learning flow. There is no separate login, no new platform, no reason to leave Canvas.
02
Capture
Every response tells a story over time.
When a student responds to a Stackle activity, that response is timestamped and stored as a versioned record. Every subsequent save creates a new version - building a progressive trail of how the student's thinking developed across the semester.
An educator doesn't just see what a student wrote. They see when they wrote it, how many times they revised it, what changed between Week 2 and Week 10, and how their understanding shifted. That development arc is extremely difficult to fabricate, which makes it structurally resistant to AI-generated content.
For activities that lock on submission - like Quick Reflect - the mechanism is different. The locked response captures authentic first-reaction thinking before the student can refine or research. Both approaches serve evidence integrity through design rather than detection.
03
See
Real-time visibility across your entire cohort.
The Progress Matrix gives educators a cohort-wide view of engagement at a glance - which students have responded, which questions remain unanswered, and where understanding is developing across the course. For a cohort of 500 students, this view makes it possible to identify exactly who is behind and on which specific question without opening a single individual record.
At the response level, educators can read every student's answer in sequence, inline, without navigating between records. The full picture of a cohort's engagement is always one view away.
ASSESSMENT WORKFLOW
Extend your Canvas and Brightspace assignments.
Most of what a student thinks, questions, and works through across a semester never makes it into the final submission. Stackle builds a pathway of evidence activities leading toward the assignment you already set - placed inside the Canvas and Brightspace pages where that thinking actually happens. Same assignment, same workflow, more of the learning made visible along the way.
Activities placed across different pages and weeks - Week 2, Week 5, Week 8, Week 11 - all connect to a single Canvas Assignment. When a student completes each stage, their response joins the development arc already in progress. By the time the assignment is due, the educator has a complete record of thinking across the semester, not just what arrived on the final day.
The complete evidence trail - every stage, every version, every timestamp - is accessible inside SpeedGrader alongside the marking, rubric, and feedback tools educators already use. There is no parallel system, no additional interface to learn, no separate gradebook entry to manage. A coherent development arc captured across weeks is also extremely difficult to fabricate. Not because the system detects anything, but because the record exists long before fabrication becomes possible.
The nine activity types that build this evidence are covered in the next section.
ACTIVITY TYPES
The right activity for every evidence need.
Every activity type embeds directly into your Canvas and Brightspace pages. Each one is designed for a specific evidence need - from a single locked response to a semester-long development arc.
Learning Journal
Timestamped, versioned reflective writing that builds across an entire semester. Students return to the same space week after week - every revision stored, every shift in thinking visible.
One space. A semester of thinking development.
Multipart Assignment
Multiple evidence stages connected to a single Canvas Assignment and gradebook entry. Progressive checkpoints across a semester compile automatically into SpeedGrader.
Multiple stages. One gradebook entry.
Quick Reflect
One response, locked on submission. Authentic first thinking captured before revision, research, or AI assistance is possible.
One question. One honest answer.
Reflect and Compare
Students submit their own thinking first, then see how peers approached the same question. Individual perspective protected before group influence.
Individual thinking protected before the conversation begins.
Reflect and Review
Students return to earlier responses and document how their understanding has changed. The evolution of thinking made explicit across weeks.
Earlier thinking, revisited. Development made visible.
Checklist
A self-completion mechanism for students to track their own progress through structured preparation sequences.
Every step. Visible in real time.
Question
Invisible inline engagement capture embedded seamlessly within Canvas page content. No title, no interface - just a response captured in the flow.
Engagement captured without interrupting the flow.
Reflect
Ongoing refinable reflective writing that students can return to and develop over time. Open-ended, flexible, and persistent.
Thinking that develops rather than concludes.
Reflect, Review and Export
Accumulated responses exported as a portable Word document. The learning journey in the student's hands - for assessments, portfolios, or professional use.
The learning journey, in their hands.
VERSIONS AND COMPARISONS
Every revision tells a story.
Revision 1 in Week 2 looks different from Revision 4 in Week 9. That difference is the learning. When an educator opens a student's version trail, they are not reading a submission - they are reading the record of how a mind changed. Where understanding deepened, where an assumption was challenged, where a vague observation became a grounded analysis. That arc, captured across weeks, is what makes Stackle evidence structurally different from anything a single endpoint submission can show.
The comparison view makes each change tangible. Content removed between revisions appears in red strikethrough. Content added appears in green underline. Word count, removed count, and added count sit beneath each revision - quantifying the scale of change between any two saves. A coherent development arc across multiple versions, captured over weeks in a live learning environment, is extremely difficult to fabricate. The version trail does not detect dishonesty. It makes authentic engagement visible by design.
Proof at Scale
The mechanism works across an entire institution.
What began as a three-course pilot at the University of Newcastle expanded to sixteen courses across six disciplines in under two months - with no additional systems for students to navigate.
74–80%
Student engagement across all disciplines
16
Courses across six disciplines in under two months
0
Additional systems for students to navigate
We were looking for a solution to address three key challenges: managing reflection at scale across multiple disciplines, collecting evidence through bite-sized and frequent student engagement, and creating a seamless student experience within Canvas. We wanted reflections to feel genuine and easy for students, while also being meaningful and embedded in their learning journey.
Meegan McHugh · Manager, Learning Technology · University of Newcastle
Read the full case study
Sean Duffy · Co-founder & CEO
See what becomes visible.
You have seen how it works. Now see it inside your own Canvas or Brightspace environment - your courses, your disciplines, your evidence needs. Thirty minutes with Sean, no slides, no scripts.