For instructors

First sign-in

Visit the /register page on your Gesso Lite site and register with the instructor email set up during installation. You'll be auto-promoted to instructor and land on the empty courses page.

Creating a course

1. From the courses page, click + New course.
2. Title: a recognizable name (e.g. "Writing 2.04").
3. Term: Fall or Winter.
4. Year: the calendar year the term begins.
5. Click Create.

Courses group on the courses page by academic year. Fall 2026 and Winter 2027 both fall under "2026–27".

Adding students

Open the course → Roster. Two ways to add people:

One at a time

Type the email, pick the role (student or tutor), click Add.

Bulk paste

Paste a list of emails (one per line, or comma-separated) into the bulk-paste box. They all get added as students.

Adding someone to the roster doesn't create their account — it just allows them to register. They register themselves at /register; only whitelisted addresses can sign up.

Creating an assignment

On the course page → + New assignment.

• Title: e.g. "Memoir Essay".
• Description: optional. Shown to students on the assignment page.
• Stages: a stage is a draft. Each has a name ("Outline", "Draft 1", "Final") and a due date. Add as many as you want with the + Add stage button.

Click Create.

Editing an assignment later

On the assignment detail page, click Edit. You can rename it, add/remove/reorder stages, change due dates. Renaming a stage automatically updates submissions filed under that stage. Removing a stage that has submissions is refused — rename instead, or remove the submissions first.

Reviewing submissions

From an assignment page, you see every student who submitted, in a table sorted by stage then by name. For each submission you can:

• Download the file directly.
• Bulk download all submissions for one stage — a single zip arrives with one file per student. Filenames embed the student's last name and a 5-character code (e.g. Anderson_Memoir-Essay_k7m3p.docx).

Returning marked-up work

Two ways:

One at a time

Click the upload icon next to a submission. Pick the marked-up file. It's stored as a return for that student, that stage. The student sees it next time they sign in.

Bulk upload

After marking up the bulk-download zip, drop it back into the Bulk return uploader. Filenames must keep the _xxxxx.ext suffix from the original (the 5-character code is what routes each file to the right student). Other parts of the filename can change (e.g. add _marked).

Caveat: if you renamed files in a way that strips or changes the trailing code, those files can't be matched and will be reported as skipped. The error message tells you which.

Course readings

The Readings tab on a course is for PDFs you want students to access — articles, syllabi, references. Drop one or many PDFs at once. They appear in a list with names and upload dates. Students see the same list on their version of the course page.

Only PDFs (the kind of thing you typically share with a class). For drafts and student-written work, that's the assignment system.

Course settings

From a course page, click Settings. Three actions:

Save as template

Captures the course's structure — title, all assignments, stage names — for reuse next year. Reading filenames are saved as an informational reference (the actual PDFs aren't copied). Save the same course as a template anytime; it's not destructive.

Archive

Hides the course from the active courses list. Reversible. Useful for last semester's courses you're not done with but don't want cluttering the main view.

Delete

Permanently destroys the course. Two-step process:

1. A backup zip downloads to your computer first. It contains course metadata, all assignments, the roster (CSV), submission records, and (optionally) the actual submission and return files. The audit log entries for this course are also included.
2. Once you confirm the backup landed safely, deletion runs: all storage files for the course are removed, the course row is deleted (cascading to assignments, submissions, etc.), and any students who were only in this course are also deleted from auth. Students who are still in another course stay; their account survives.

To confirm, you type the course title exactly. Cannot be undone. There is no soft-delete after this point.

Templates

From the courses page header, click Templates. You see all templates you've saved. Click one to:

• Preview the assignments and reading filenames it stores
• Create a new course from it — you pick the new course's title, term, and year; the assignments get duplicated with empty due dates, ready for you to fill in
• Delete the template

Audit log

Click Audit in the courses list header. You see a chronological list of significant actions you've taken across all your courses: uploads, returns, archive/unarchive, course creation/deletion, template saves. Filterable by course.

Themes

Every page has a Light / Auto / Dark toggle in the footer. Auto follows your system theme. The choice persists across sessions.