What is a Hāpara Workspace? Follow
This article helps teachers and administrators understand what a Hāpara Workspace is and when to use it.
In this article:
- What is a Hāpara Workspace?
- How teachers use Hāpara Workspaces
- How students experience Hāpara Workspaces
- When to create a Hāpara Workspace
- Additional tips
What is a Hāpara Workspace?
A Hāpara Workspace is a structured digital space where teachers organize learning goals, resources, tasks and assessments for a unit, project or lesson.
It helps teachers differentiate learning and helps students clearly see what they are working on, why it matters and what they need to do next.
Teachers build Workspaces to bring together everything students need for a learning sequence, including:
Learning goals and success criteria
Resources such as links, videos, documents and slides
Tasks and checkpoints for students
Evidence of learning that students submit
Rubrics or assessment criteria
A Workspace can represent a single lesson, a multi-week unit or an ongoing project.
How teachers use Hāpara Workspaces
Teachers can:
Design a clear learning journey by organizing work into sections (for example: Explore, Learn, Practice, Create, Assess).
Add a variety of resources (Google Docs, Slides, Forms, website or video links and PDFs) to support different learning styles.
Assign tasks to the whole class or to specific groups of students.
Differentiate by creating groups and giving them different resources, tasks or due dates.
Reuse and adapt existing Workspaces from their own library, school library or the wider public Hāpara Workspace library.
Collaborate with other teachers by co-creating and sharing Workspaces.
How students experience Hāpara Workspaces
Students can:
See the purpose, instructions and expectations for their learning in one place.
Access all required resources, tasks and due dates without searching multiple tools.
Submit work and view feedback directly from the Workspace.
Work individually or with classmates on shared activities.
Take more ownership of learning by choosing from differentiated tasks or resources when the teacher has provided options.
When to create a Hāpara Workspace
Teachers might create a Workspace when they:
Start a new unit, project or inquiry.
Want to organize multi-step tasks that span several lessons.
Need to differentiate resources and tasks for different groups.
Want students to see the “big picture” of what they are learning and how it will be assessed.
Plan to reuse or share a successful unit with colleagues.
Additional tips
Start small: It is fine to begin with a simple Workspace for one short unit and add more elements over time.
Reuse templates: Copy an existing Workspace and adjust it rather than starting from scratch.
Use clear titles: Name each Workspace and section in a way that matches how teachers and students already talk about the unit or topic (for example: “Fractions – Comparing and Ordering”).
Make learning expectations visible: Add instructions and success criteria directly to the Workspace so students always know what you expect.