How do I try Lectora on my own Canvas courses?

Is this guide right for you?

This PAT path fits four cases: a solo pilot where one teacher is trying Lectora on their own courses; a demo or evaluation where you're showing the product to stakeholders before committing to an institution-wide install; testing and QA where you're quickly connecting Lectora to a staging Canvas instance; and self-hosted single-user deployments where you run your own Lectora instance for your own teaching. If your goal is for every teacher at your institution to use Lectora, your Canvas admin should install it via LTI 1.3 instead — that's the compliant, scalable path. Same goes for any rollout where the token would have to leave the original token-holder's account.

Canvas's API Policy specifically restricts manually generated personal access tokens to personal, single-user use. A third-party app that asks each teacher in a multi-user deployment to generate and hand over a token isn't compliant; Canvas expects that path to go through LTI 1.3 or institution-level OAuth instead. In practice, that means the PAT path described in this guide is fine for one person evaluating Lectora on their own Canvas account, or a self-hosted Lectora deployment where you are the only user. Anything broader needs the LTI install.

How the PAT path works

The flow is, in sequence: you sign up to Lectora with an email and password; you generate a personal access token in Canvas; you paste the token (along with your Canvas URL) into Lectora; Lectora encrypts the token using AES-256-GCM and stores it; from then on, Lectora reads your courses and posts grades back to Canvas as you, using that token. The token is never logged in plaintext and is treated as the equivalent of a password.

What you'll need before starting: a Canvas account with teacher access to at least one course (any Canvas works — your institution's, or a free Canvas account at canvas.instructure.com), an email address to register your Lectora account, and about ten minutes. You do not need Canvas admin access.

Step 1 — Create your Lectora account

Open Lectora in your browser. For most users this is the hosted production app at https://lectora.app; if your institution self-hosts Lectora on its own domain (it's open source), use that URL instead.

1. Click Sign up.
2. Enter your email and choose a password.
3. Verify your email if prompted.

You're now logged in. Lectora will ask you to connect a Canvas instance next — keep this tab open while you go generate the token.

Step 2 — Generate a Canvas personal access token

A personal access token is Canvas's way of letting external apps act on your behalf. You generate it once in Canvas, paste it into Lectora, and Lectora stores it encrypted.

1. In Canvas, click your account avatar in the top-left of the global navigation, then click Settings.
2. Scroll down to the Approved Integrations section.
3. Click + New Access Token.
4. Fill in the dialog:
   • Purpose — Lectora Pilot — <today's date> (something you'll recognise later when revoking)
   • Expires — 30 or 60 days. Avoid leaving this blank — a never-expiring token is a security risk you don't want on an evaluation account.
5. Click Generate Token.
6. Click the copy icon, or select and copy the entire long string (Canvas tokens are around 70 characters).

Treat the token like a password — anyone with it can read and modify your Canvas data as if they were you. Lectora encrypts it at rest using AES-256-GCM, but you should still revoke it the moment you stop using Lectora, never paste it into a chat or email, and prefer the short expiry you set above.

Step 3 — Connect Canvas to Lectora

Back in Lectora, either follow the onboarding prompt that appeared after signup, or open Settings → Canvas Connection.

1. Enter your Canvas URL in the first field. Examples:
   • Free Canvas: https://canvas.instructure.com
   • Institution: https://canvas.your-school.edu
2. Paste the Personal Access Token from Step 2 into the second field.
3. Click Save.

Step 4 — Confirm you can see your courses

1. Open the Lectora home page (or the Courses view).
2. Within a few seconds, your active Canvas courses appear in the list.
3. Open any course and pick an assignment.

You're ready to grade. From here, Lectora's in-product onboarding walks through your first grading batch and publishing feedback back to Canvas.

After the pilot

When your evaluation is done, you have three options. If you want to keep using Lectora yourself, nothing further is required — when your token expires, generate a new one and update it in Settings → Canvas Connection. If you want to roll out to your whole school, hand the LTI 1.3 admin install guide to your Canvas administrator; after they install it institution-wide, every teacher launches Lectora from the course sidebar with no PAT setup per teacher. If you want to stop using Lectora, revoke the token in Canvas (Settings → Approved Integrations → trash icon next to your Lectora token), then delete your Lectora account or just stop logging in.