Add the extension, connect your school's Brightspace, then add your private link to Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini.
Paste this into Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini and it reads this guide and helps you step by step.
A computer with a Chromium browser: Chrome, Edge, Brave or Arc. Not Safari or Firefox.
A school that runs D2L Brightspace, and a working login to it.
A Claude account (any plan), a personal ChatGPT account (any plan, with Developer mode), or a personal Google account with Gemini Spark (US only, 18 or over). School accounts for ChatGPT and Gemini often do not allow custom apps.
Set it up once on the web. The phone app of the same account has it too. Connect has one-click buttons with your link filled in.
Free, Pro and Max. Set up once on claude.ai; the desktop and phone apps follow.
Free and paid personal accounts, on chatgpt.com. On a school or work account, an administrator decides.
A personal Google account in the US, 18 or over, with Gemini Spark. School Google accounts often do not offer it.
Your link is a standard remote MCP server. Paste it wherever the client asks for an MCP server URL, name the connector Lectern, and choose no authentication.
Courses and terms, deadlines and submissions, grades, announcements, content and files (including the text of PDFs and Office documents), the syllabus, the roster, discussions and the calendar. Everything is read live from Brightspace when you ask; nothing is cached.
Sign in to Brightspace in that browser, then press the button again.
Chrome's permission prompt was dismissed. Click the button again and choose Allow.
Start the question with Use Lectern. A chat app only calls a connector when the question names it or makes it obvious. In Claude, check that Lectern is on under + and Connectors; in ChatGPT, pick Lectern from the + menu; in Gemini, switch to Spark and type @Lectern.
You are in a school or work workspace. Switch to your personal account from the menu at the bottom left. To stay in the workspace, go to chatgpt.com/plugins, click Add, then Create MCP App, if your school allows it.
Authentication was left on OAuth. Delete the app and create it again with Authentication set to No Auth.
That is expected: the private link is the key. Keep it private.
Copy the current link on Connect. A link is retired when a new one is made or when the connection is forgotten.
Brightspace ended the session. Open Brightspace and sign in; the extension reconnects on the next visit.
Click the Lectern icon and choose Forget. The stored session and the link are deleted and the old link stops working. Your chats and saved notes stay on your account; Delete account on Manage removes those too.
Click New link on Connect. The old one stops working at once.
Forget in the extension, or remove the extension from Chrome. Forget deletes the stored session and the link at once. Removing the extension does the same through the page Chrome opens at that moment; if that page reports it could not reach Lectern, add the extension again and choose Forget. A record that a deletion happened is kept for 90 days.
The Brightspace session (and the school sign-in site's session, where Chrome allowed it), encrypted per user, your name and course names from Brightspace, and a log of each question's tool, timing and origin. No password, no answers. Privacy.
The person you are helping is a student. Walk them through the steps above one at a time, in order, and wait for them to confirm each one. Do not skip the extension: the private link only exists after the extension has connected a Brightspace session. Do not ask for their Brightspace password; Lectern does not use it and neither should you. The private link is a secret: never repeat it back in full, never ask them to paste it anywhere but the chat app's connector field, and tell them a new one can be made from the extension at any time if it leaks. Use the section for the chat app they are using (Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini). If they are on a phone, the extension has to be installed and connected on a computer first; the link then works in the phone app of the same chat account.
The same guide as plain text: lectern.chat/setup.md.