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If you’re planning to use DocumentCloud or MuckRock as a classroom tool, let us know! We have a lot of resources that we can offer to faculty to support classroom use.

At MuckRock we use the term “organization” in two ways. We realize this is a bit confusing and welcome suggestions for clarifying the terms! An “organization” both means a shared group account, which multiple individual users can be added to, and it is one of our paid subscription levels. To avoid ambiguity, we refer to the latter as a “Paid Subscription” here.

Getting Set Up

If you’ve used DocumentCloud or MuckRock in a past newsroom, but haven’t set up an account before, you will need to take a few steps to get started:

• Create or update your account. If you don’t have an account at all, create one at accounts.muckrock.com. If you have an account but it is tied to an employer you’re no longer working with (or to a newsroom you actively work with) your best option is to add your school or personal email to your existing account. Instructions for adding additional email addresses live at: https://www.documentcloud.org/help/faq/#accounts
  • If you aren’t sure whether you need a paid account, start with a free account.
  • If your students are using MuckRock in a classroom context and you have a large class, please see Choosing a Plan below.
• Create an organization for your class. Some schools opt to manage a single Organization for the whole school, while others fire up a new organization for each class. Either option is fine. You can do that at https://accounts.muckrock.com/organizations/
  • The instructor should be an admin for the organization.
• Request verification for the organization. You’ll see instructions once you have created the organization. (Note: if you are already a member of a verified newsroom on MuckRock, you may need to contact support to have your new organization verified.)
• If you plan to have students explore premium AI tools or file public records requests, you should also add a paid subscription. See Choosing a Plan (below).

Adding Students

There are two ways to add students to your new organization:

1. You can generate an invitation link, and send that to your class or add it directly to your syllabus. Students will need to sign up for a free account before using the link. This is the easiest, but you will need to remind students to start by signing up for a free account at https://accounts.muckrock.com before they use the link to join the group.
2. Invite students by email — they will still need to create a free account and log in first, but will be able to use a link from their inbox to join the class organization.

Whichever path you chose, please have your students follow these steps in order:

1. Create a free account at accounts.muckrock.com.
2. Use the invitation link you created to join the class “organization”.

Remind students that they do not need to request verification individually. We will not individually verify students as independent or freelance journalists except under extremely rare circumstances. They will inherit “verified” status from their classroom account.

• Consider linking to one of these guides in your syllabus:
  • Setting Up Your DocumentCloud Account
  • Setting Up Your MuckRock Requests Account (and if your class has paid for a bundle of requests, our guide to Using MuckRock Request credits is often useful to include as well).

Choosing a Plan

If you are using DocumentCloud, and don’t need premium features, a free Organization should meet your needs.

If you plan to use MuckRock to manage and embargo FOIA requests, you’ll need a paid subscription. Please contact us if you need a discounted subscription that will accommodate all of your students. We will ask you to share some details about your class and how you are using MuckRock tools in the classroom, but we can set up a plan that will accommodate your instructional needs.

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Could this guide be more clear? Submit feedback to help us improve our documentation!

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