Importing Brightspace Classes and Rosters

This article walks through importing Brightspace classes and rosters into PaperScorer, and covers what happens when rosters change later. It assumes your Brightspace account is already connected — if it isn’t, see connecting your account to Brightspace first.

Running an Import

From any page in the application, click the create button and select the Class option.

From the “create new class” modal, select Brightspace import. (You may see additional options depending on which other accounts your institution has connected.)

You’ll see a list of available Brightspace classes you can import.

1. Name (required): the class name as it appears in Brightspace. You can change it to something different before saving in PaperScorer.
2. Import (required): how PaperScorer should handle this class record at import time:
   1. Do not import class — the class will be skipped.
   2. Import with students — the class will be imported along with its roster.
   3. Import without students — the class will be imported, but no students will be added. You can add or import them later.

After the import finishes, you’ll be redirected to your active class list and the new class(es) will appear there.

Keeping Rosters in Sync

The import is a one-time snapshot — PaperScorer doesn’t automatically reflect later changes in Brightspace. If your roster changes later:

• A student is enrolled in Brightspace. Re-run the Brightspace import flow for the same class — new students will be added to the existing PaperScorer roster.
• A student is unenrolled in Brightspace. They won’t be auto-removed from PaperScorer. You can remove them manually from the class roster if needed; their existing scan history stays attached to them.
• A student’s name changes in Brightspace. Re-importing the class roster will update the student record in PaperScorer to match the new name.

Edge Cases

A class is archived in Brightspace after I imported it.

The PaperScorer class stays, and you can keep printing/scanning/grading for it. But the archived class will no longer appear in the “available classes” list for import, so you can’t re-sync the roster. If you need to refresh the roster, an admin will need to unarchive the class.

A class has multiple sections in Brightspace.

Each Brightspace section is treated as its own importable class in PaperScorer. Import the sections separately if you want them as separate PaperScorer classes, or consolidate manually if you’d prefer to combine them.

I imported the same class twice.

PaperScorer detects classes already imported from Brightspace and updates the existing record rather than creating a duplicate. Students are matched by their Brightspace user ID, so re-importing won’t create duplicates.

I see a class in Brightspace but it’s not in the import list.

Confirm three things in Brightspace: (1) the class is active (not inactive or archived); (2) you’re enrolled as a teacher/instructor; (3) you signed in to PaperScorer with the same Brightspace account that has access to the class. If all three are true and the class still doesn’t appear, try disconnecting and reconnecting your Brightspace account.