# Course materials

Upload syllabus, notes, and links so SOL can draft courses and ground the tutor in your content only.

**Materials** are the source of truth for a course. SOL uses indexed materials to draft lessons, practice, and quizzes, and to keep the course tutor scoped to what you teach.

Nothing in Materials is automatically shown to students as a file download. Students see what you **author and release** (lessons, quizzes, discussions).

## Why materials matter

| Without materials | With materials Ready |
| --- | --- |
| Authoring has little to ground on | Draft outlines from your syllabus and notes |
| Tutor risks generic answers | Tutor answers from your course only |
| Concept tags may be thin | Stronger concept coverage for analytics |

## Prerequisites

1. Role is **Professor** (or Admin)
2. You have joined a section for the course ([Faculty onboarding](/docs/professor-onboarding))

## Add materials

1. Open **Materials** and pick the course
2. Upload supported files, or add an allowed URL
3. Wait until status is **Ready** (processing extracts text and builds searchable chunks)

If a material fails, remove it and try again, or use a cleaner PDF / plain text source. Very large scans without text may not index well.

## Safety and privacy

- Prefer your own course files and links you are allowed to use
- Do not upload student education records into Materials
- Processing stays inside the SOL deployment; see [Security](/security) for AI and retention posture

## Next steps

When materials are Ready:

1. [Author a draft course](/docs/professor-authoring)
2. Release only what you approve
3. Optionally connect Agent Access tools with `materials:write` / `authoring:write`

## Related guides

- [Authoring from materials](/docs/professor-authoring)
- [Faculty onboarding](/docs/professor-onboarding)
- [Agent Access](/docs/professor-agent-access)