How to connect Brightspace to Claude

Claude is the AI a lot of students reach for when the reading is long and the concept is hard. It's patient, it explains things step by step, and it can get through a 60 page chapter without losing the thread. The catch is that it only knows what you give it, and getting your course into Claude usually means a lot of downloading and dragging.

A custom connector fixes that. Set it up once and Claude can pull from every file in your Brightspace courses on its own.

What you need

• A Brightspace (D2L) account at your school.
• Chrome on a computer for the first sync.
• A Claude account.

Step 1: Sync your courses

1. Create a Chat2L account and pick your school.
2. Install the Chat2L Sync extension for Chrome when it asks.
3. Open Brightspace in Chrome while you're logged in.

Chat2L imports your slides, PDFs, Word files, readings, announcements, assignments and quizzes. It checks for new files every 30 minutes while Chrome is open, so you don't have to think about it again.

Step 2: Add the connector in Claude

1. In Claude, open Settings, then Connectors.
2. Choose Add custom connector.
3. Name it Chat2L and paste https://www.chat2l.com/mcp as the URL.
4. Choose Add, then Connect, and sign in to Chat2L to allow access.

That's it. Claude now shows Chat2L in your list of connectors.

Step 3: Ask about your courses

Open a new chat and ask about a course by name or code. Claude decides on its own when to look something up, so you don't need special wording. Some good ones to start with:

• "What do I need to get done today?"
• "What topics are on my BIO 120 midterm?"
• "I missed Thursday's lecture. Walk me through what we covered."
• "Quiz me on the week 5 readings, one question at a time."

Because Claude handles long documents well, it's a good fit for asking about a whole lecture deck or a full reading at once instead of one slide at a time.

Seeing the actual slide

Some questions can't be answered from text alone. When the answer depends on a chart, a diagram or a worked example drawn on a slide, Claude can view the page as an image, up to four pages at a time. Try "explain the graph on slide 14" or "show me what the diagram on page 3 means."

Is it safe to connect?

The connector is read only, and Claude only sees your own synced courses. It can't post, submit or change anything in Brightspace. You can disconnect it any time, either in Claude's connector settings or in Chat2L under Settings.

Using ChatGPT instead? Here's how to connect Brightspace to ChatGPT.

Frequently asked questions