Manual

For students

Find your course, submit drafts, download returns. The whole site should take about ten minutes to learn.

Getting in

Your instructor will give you a URL (something like gesso.example.edu) and tell you they've added you to the class. Visit the URL → click Register.

Fill in the form:

Your full name
Your email — the same address your instructor added you with
A password (at least 8 characters)

If your email isn't on the list, you'll see "This email is not on the class list." Contact your instructor to be added. Otherwise, registration succeeds and you land on your courses page.

Your courses

The Courses page shows every course you're enrolled in. Click a course to enter it.

Inside a course, you'll see two main areas:

Assignments — the writing you'll be turning in
Readings — PDFs your instructor has uploaded

Submitting an assignment

Click into an assignment. You'll see:

The assignment description (if any)
A list of stages — Outline, Draft 1, Final, etc. — with due dates
An upload box for each stage

For the stage you're working on, drag a file into the upload box (or click to choose one). Accepted formats: .doc, .docx, .odt. Maximum 50 MB.

After uploading, your submission appears in the stage's history with a timestamp. If you submitted before the due date, it's on time. If after, it's flagged as Late.

Resubmitting

You can replace your submission anytime by uploading a new file for the same stage — the new one supersedes the old. (Your instructor sees only the latest.)

Late submissions

Submitting after a stage's due date is allowed. The submission is marked Late so your instructor knows. Whether late submissions are accepted is a course-by-course policy decision; ask your instructor.

Receiving feedback

When your instructor returns marked-up work, the Returns column on the assignment page populates. Click the file to download. The marked-up version is yours to keep — Gesso Lite isn't going to delete it on you, but a copy in your own backup is wise.

Reading PDFs

On the course page, click Readings. You see the list of PDFs your instructor uploaded. Click any name to download.

Account

Resetting your password

On the sign-in page, click Forgot password?. Enter your email. You'll get a reset link by email; the link opens a page where you set a new password. The link is valid for an hour.

Signing out

Use the Sign Out link in the page footer. It clears your session on this device.

Themes

The footer also has a Light / Auto / Dark toggle. Auto follows your operating system. The choice sticks across sessions.

Getting help

Anything broken or confusing — talk to your instructor first. They have visibility into the course's state.

A note on what we keep

Gesso Lite stores: your name, your email, your submissions, your instructor's marked-up returns. Nothing else. No tracking, no analytics, no behavioral data. When the course is deleted at the end of the semester, all of this is destroyed too — your instructor downloads a backup, then the rest is wiped.