If you or your students are getting a message on the screen that says "Forbidden 403" or a similar error, don't worry! It's easy to fix!

Students See the Error

The most common cause for students to receive a 403 error is that the Schoology material does not have grading enabled. TeacherMade assignments cannot launch correctly without grading enabled because Schoology fails to send TeacherMade all the information required to start the activity. To fix the problem, edit the Material in Schoology and click the "Enable Grading" checkbox:

You See the Error

First, let’s understand what’s happening. When you look at a activity, Schoology passes us your E-mail address. We look that up in our database, and find your activity. If your E-mail is different in Schoology than it is in TeacherMade, then we won’t be able to find you and you’ll get the 403 error as a result. Since this has been the case for so many Teachers, we have made it easy to fix.

To prevent this message, you can add a second E-mail address to TeacherMade (e.g. the E-mail you use for your Schoology account), and we’ll look for both E-mail addresses when we get a Schoology request for an activity.

To add a second E-mail to your TeacherMade account, sign in to TeacherMade and click your Profile icon in the upper right of the screen.

Choose “Update E-mail.”

Enter your second Email address in the field, then click “Add Email.”

Your second address will appear on the screen. But notice – and this is important! – that the E-mail is unverified.

So, go into your E-mail system, find the E-mail just sent from TeacherMade, and follow the instructions to verify that second E-mail address!

Once you’ve done that, you can use either E-mail to sign in to TeacherMade. And now, we’ll be able to find your activities when Schoology asks for them. So, go back to Schoology and reload the assignment. Voila! Problem solved!