Getting Started: Creating a Course and Adding Students
Once your account is set up, the first real building block on Lab.Computer is the course. A course is the container for everything else — assignments, enrolled students, and grading records all live inside it. There are two ways a course ends up on Lab.Computer: you create and populate it yourself, or it's created automatically the moment someone launches a Lab.Computer assignment from your school's LMS. This guide covers both, with the standalone path first since it's the one you'll use if you're not connected to an LMS.
Path 1: Standalone
Creating your first course
When instructors log in, the Created Courses section opens by default on the dashboard — this is where every course you build will show up.
- From the dashboard, make sure you're on the Created tab (it's the default view for instructors).
- Click + Create Course.
- Enter a Course title (required) and, optionally, a Course description that helps students understand the course at a glance.
- Decide on the two sharing checkboxes — covered in detail just below — then click Create.
The course appears immediately in your Created list with today's date, its description, and a “Course created successfully” confirmation — ready for configuration and assignments.
Course configuration options worth understanding
Two checkboxes on the create screen — and the matching Edit screen you can return to anytime — change how students can get into your course, so it's worth understanding them before you start inviting anyone.
- “Make the course publicly accessible” (checked by default) generates a shareable course link. Anyone with the link can find and request to join the course — turning this off keeps the course invite-only.
- “Allow others to import assessments” lets other instructors clone your course's assignments into their own account. It's meant for collaborative course development and keeping content consistent across sections.
You can revisit both settings anytime from the course's Overview tab → Edit. The Edit screen also lets you update the title and description without recreating the course.
Adding students
Open a course and go to the Students tab. From there you have three ways to get students enrolled, and you can mix and match them depending on class size.
Copy Course Link
If the course is publicly accessible, the Students tab shows a Copy Course Link button in the top right. Share that link with your class and they can find and request to join the course directly — no invite needed on your end.
Invite via Email
Click Invite Students to open the invite panel. Under Invite via Email, enter one or more student addresses separated by commas, spaces, or semicolons and click Invite. Each invite you send shows up under the Pending invites tab with its email, timestamp, and status until it's accepted.
Bulk Invite via CSV
For large classes, switch to the Bulk Invite tab inside the same panel. Download the sample CSV to see the expected format, then drag your own file in (or use Browse File). Every address in the file is invited in one pass and tracked the same way under Pending invites.
Both invite tabs also show the course's Share course ID, with a one-click copy button — a code you can hand out directly to students who'll enter it themselves rather than clicking a link.
Copy Course Link and the Share course ID both rely on the course being publicly accessible. If you've turned that off, invite students directly by email or CSV instead.
Managing your enrolled students
The Students tab is also your ongoing roster view, showing everyone currently enrolled. If you need to remove a student, locate them in the list and use the action menu next to their row to revoke access.
Path 2: Through Canvas (LMS)
If your school connects Lab.Computer to Canvas, you typically don't need to manually create the course or enroll students at all. The first time a student or instructor launches a Lab.Computer assignment from Canvas, Lab.Computer automatically creates or updates the matching course record and enrolls that person as part of the same launch — no invite link, Share ID, or CSV upload required. See Canvas LTI 1.3 Integration — Step 1 and Canvas Assignment Setup and Launch — Step 2 for the full setup.
The standalone enrollment tools above (Copy Course Link, Invite via Email, Bulk Invite) still work on a Canvas-synced course, but most instructors managing rosters through their LMS will rely on Canvas enrollment instead of mixing the two.
What's next
With a course created — or synced in from Canvas — and students enrolled, the next step is building out the work they'll actually do: assignments. That's covered in the next article in this series.