Setting up your first class
A classroom in Red Stet is a container for one cohort of students plus everything you'll do together — assignments, submissions, recordings, messages. You'll build one per section or period. This doc walks you through what each piece does.
First question: did you arrive in Red Stet from your school's LMS (Canvas, or another LTI 1.3 LMS your school has connected)? If yes, jump to the section right below — your setup looks different, and most of the rest of this doc is reference, not steps.
Started from your LMS? Read this first
If you arrived in Red Stet by clicking an assignment, tool link, or external app inside Canvas (or another LMS your school has connected via LTI 1.3), your setup looks very different from what the rest of this doc describes.
What's already done for you
- Your classroom was created automatically the first time you launched. You don't need the "+ Create classroom" form — your class is already on your dashboard, named to match the LMS course.
- The roster syncs from your LMS. Students appear on the People tab without needing a join code or invite link. Re-running the sync after add/drops updates the roster.
- Grades pass back automatically. When you grade an assignment that's bound to an LMS column, the score lands in your LMS gradebook within a few seconds.
- Students sign in through the LMS. They click the same assignment link in the LMS and Red Stet recognizes them — no separate signup, no second password.
What you can skip below
The sections on creating the class, sharing the join code, and sharing the invite link don't apply to you. Skim the rest for reference — what each tab does (Stream / Classwork / People), how class defaults work, what roster visibility means — but the day-one mechanics are handled.
If something's not working
If your class didn't appear, the roster's empty, or grades aren't passing back, that's almost always an LMS-integration issue, not a Red Stet account issue. See Connecting Red Stet to your LMS for per-LMS troubleshooting and sync timing.
What a class is
One classroom = one cohort of students. The name you give it is what students see in their dashboard, so use the name they'll recognize on day one — "AP Lit · Period 4" beats "Smith English 2026".
Everything inside the classroom — assignments, submissions, recordings, messages — is scoped to it. A student in two of your classes will see two separate classroom cards, and an assignment in one class is invisible from the other.
You'll usually want one classroom per section or period. Don't try to combine multiple sections into one big classroom — Red Stet's variant routing handles differentiation inside a section better than splitting roster across sections does across sections.
Creating the class teacher dashboard
On the teacher dashboard, click the ＋ Create classroom disclosure to open the inline form. Three fields:
- Name (required) — what students see. Short and recognizable.
- Subject (optional) — shown under the name on the class card. Helpful when a teacher runs multiple subjects.
- Term (optional) — e.g. "Fall 2026" or "Q3 2026-27". Used when you archive last year's class and the new one shares a similar name.
Click Create classroom. Red Stet drops you straight into the new class so you can start adding the first assignment.
The class color color
Red Stet picks a color for your new class automatically — it grabs the least-used color from the palette so consecutive classes you create get visually distinct.
The color shows as the stripe across the top of the class card, the header strip when you open the class, and the dot in the notification feed. It's a navigation aid more than a brand element.
You can change it later from the color swatches in the class header — pick any swatch to recolor on the spot. Useful when a class swaps periods or you want the same color across two related sections.
Sharing the join code joinCode
Every new classroom gets a 6-character join code — short, easy to read aloud, made of uppercase letters and digits. Read it from the class header strip and a copy button is right next to it.
Students join by going to their dashboard and entering the code. They get added to the roster instantly, so you can read out the code at the top of class and watch the People tab fill in.
Use the join code when:
- Students are physically in the room on day one
- You're projecting the code on a board
- You want a low-friction one-shot way in
The code is case-insensitive and ignores hyphens, so reading "RS-7K-2P" works as well as "RS7K2P".
Sharing the invite link inviteToken
The invite link sits next to the join code in the class header. It's a longer, opaque URL — same outcome, different surface area:
- Email it to a parent or homeschool family
- Drop it in a Schoology / Canvas / Slack message
- Embed it in a class-info handout PDF
- Send to one student who joined late
A student who clicks the link signs in (or signs up), and Red Stet auto-enrolls them on landing. No code to type, no chance of mis-hearing it.
Both methods do the same thing — the invite link is just the friction-free version for asynchronous channels.
Rotating a leaked invite link
If the invite link gets into hands that shouldn't have it — a student forwards it outside the class, the link ends up in a public document, anything — you can rotate it.
In the class header, click ↻ Rotate invite link. The old link goes dead immediately; a fresh one takes its place. Students already enrolled stay enrolled — rotation only affects new joins. The 6-character join code is unchanged.
Rotation is also the right move at the start of a new term if you're re-using a class shell from a previous year.
Inside the class — Stream, Classwork, People
Click a class card and you're inside. Three tabs:
Stream
Chronological feed of everything posted in this class — assignments and assignment updates. The home view when you and students open the class. Newest at the top.
Classwork
Assignment-focused list. The big ＋ New assignment button lives here. Use this tab when you're authoring or surveying assignments without the noise of updates and replies.
People
The roster. See who's enrolled, when they joined, who hasn't been active recently. From here you remove students, view per-student tags (for variant routing), and see invites still pending.
Managing the roster
The People tab is your roster. Each row is one enrolled student: name, when they joined, last activity. Click a row for actions:
- Tags — give a student tags like
ESL,honors,extended-time,IEP. Variants on assignments route by these tags. The vocabulary is up to you — Red Stet doesn't enforce a list. - Remove from class — student leaves the roster. Their past submissions stay on their account; you no longer see them in your view. Removal is soft, so re-adding them later restores history.
The roster is the source of truth for who can submit. If a student isn't on it, their assignment list for this class will be empty.
Roster visibility rosterVisibility
By default, students don't see each other's names. Each student sees only you (the teacher) and themselves. This is the FERPA-safe default.
Some teaching contexts work better when students can see each other — peer review, group work coordination, just knowing who's in the room. Flip the Roster visibility toggle at the top of the People tab and the roster opens up to students too.
This is per-class, not per-student. There's no "show some students, hide others" — it's all or nothing. Default off; turn on deliberately.
Classroom defaults defaultStylePreset · defaultMaxAttempts
Open the ⚙ Defaults button in the class header to set values that pre-fill every new assignment in this class. These aren't hard rules — they just save typing the same setup over and over.
- Style preset — Chicago, AP, APA, MLA, or none. Pre-selects the assignment-level style preset; teachers override per-assignment when needed.
- Max submission attempts — pre-fills the submission-attempts cap. Set
3for a revision-friendly class,1for high-stakes work. Leave blank for unlimited.
Per-assignment overrides always win. The defaults are a starting point, not a constraint.
Archiving a class
At the end of a term, archive the class instead of deleting it. In the class header, click 📦 Archive.
Archiving:
- Hides the class from your active dashboard
- Hides it from students' dashboards too
- Preserves all assignments, submissions, recordings, and messages
- Can be undone — toggle Show archived on the dashboard to unarchive
Joining is closed on an archived class — the join code and invite link won't enroll new students.
Records of archived classes remain on the platform indefinitely unless you actively request deletion (see Data retention & deletion).
Next steps
Once your class is set up and a few students have joined, the next step is creating your first assignment.
→ Creating an assignment — every section of the New Assignment modal explained.
→ Back to the help library for more topics.
Missing something? Email feedback — this doc grows by use.