Yes. Qualified K–12 teachers in the Brilliant for Educators program can share courses or lessons with students and monitor progress by class. Today, sharing Brilliant means pointing students to a course or lesson via a direct link, Google Classroom, another learning management system, or email. Progress reporting shows completion and effort — such as lessons completed, time spent, course progress, and lesson completion dates — not answer-level correctness or a formal gradebook.
What is Brilliant for Educators?
Brilliant for Educators is Brilliant's free program for K–12 teachers, giving them and their students access to Brilliant's interactive math and computer science courses at no cost. Teachers can apply for Educator access at educator.brilliant.org.
Once approved, teachers gain access to an Educator Portal, which includes the ability to:
- create classes and invite students;
- browse Brilliant's content library by topic or keyword, grade level, and standard;
- assign courses and lessons to students;
- track class progress.
How teachers share Brilliant with students
Once approved for Brilliant for Educators, teachers gain access to an educator portal that includes Brilliant's Lessons finder. From here, you can search Brilliant's library by topic, standard, grade-level band, course name, and keywords, and share it with students in one of three ways:
- A direct link. In the Educator Portal, a teacher can copy a link to any course or lesson and share it however they choose, by email, by posting it, or by reading it aloud.
- A learning management system. The Lessons table includes an option to send the content link directly to Google Classroom, or you can post the direct link to your specific LMS.
- Verbal direction. In class, a teacher tells students which course or lesson to open.
Sharing a Brilliant lesson this way does not restrict a student to only that content. There is currently no setting that locks a student out of the rest of the catalog, so a student can explore other courses on their own alongside whatever you pointed them to.
How teachers monitor student progress
The Class Progress view in the Educator Portal shows two things for every student: Total Lessons Completed and Total Time Spent. Time spent only counts while a student is actively working, not while a browser tab is simply open.
A teacher can narrow this view in two ways:
- By date range, choosing the last 7 days, the last 30 days, or a custom range.
- By specific course, to see lesson completion and time for one course instead of everything a student has worked on.
Clicking into a course shows lesson-level detail: a checkmark for each completed lesson, the time spent on it, and the date it was completed.
Progress reporting terms
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Total Lessons Completed | The number of lessons a student has completed in the selected view. Depending on the filter, this can show progress across all courses or within one course. |
| Total Time Spent | The active time a student has spent working in Brilliant lessons, shown in hours and minutes. Time spent does not count a browser tab simply being open. |
| Date range filter | A way to view student activity for a specific time period, such as the last 7 days, the last 30 days, or a custom range. |
| Course filter | A way to narrow progress reporting to one course instead of all Brilliant activity. |
| Lesson completion checkmark | An indicator that a student completed a specific lesson. It does not mean the lesson is graded or that every answer was correct. |
| Completion date | The date a student completed a lesson, visible in lesson-level progress reporting. |
Progress data is not instant. It updates about once an hour, so a teacher checking mid-class may see a short delay before the most recent activity appears.
Why progress reporting shows completion effort instead of grades
Brilliant lessons are built around productive struggle: mistakes are treated as part of how a student learns, not something to penalize. Hints and direct guidance appear whenever a student gets stuck, so they always have a way to keep going, and a lesson is designed to be valuable even before a student answers correctly.
This shapes what progress monitoring shows. A student who gets a problem wrong, reads the explanation, and has a lightbulb moment before getting it right the second time has still learned the concept. A raw right-or-wrong count on the first attempt would miss that.
Privacy and data
Student progress data is visible only to:
- The teacher who created the classroom
- The student viewing their own progress
Brilliant is certified by kidSAFE through its +COPPA CERTIFIED Seal program, which independently verifies compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and kidSAFE's online safety guidelines. Brilliant also complies with FERPA and GDPR. We do not sell student data or use it for marketing purposes.
Frequently asked questions
Can I assign a specific Brilliant lesson to my students?
Yes. Today, "assign" means sharing a link, not creating a formal assignment with a due date. Copy a link from the Educator Portal, post it in a learning management system like Google Classroom, send it by email, or tell students verbally. No specific learning management system is required.
Does sharing a lesson stop students from exploring other content?
No. There is no setting that limits a student to only what a teacher shared. Students can explore the rest of the catalog on their own at any time.
What can teachers see in progress data, and how current is it?
Teachers can see lesson-level completion, including whether a lesson was finished, time spent, and completion date. Updates are not real time; they happen about once an hour, so there can be a short delay before a student's most recent activity appears.
