Lessons are the core units of teaching activity in Bobbin. Each Lesson represents a scheduled teaching session between a Tutor and a Student (or group of Students). You can view, search, and manage all Lessons from the Lessons tab in the menu.
The Lessons page is a central hub for everything happening across your organization. It shows every Lesson - past, present, and future - in a single searchable table.
Clicking on any Lesson row opens that Lesson details page, where you'll find AI-generated insights, the transcript, and the Lesson plan.
Note: Coming from TutorCruncher?
You'll first need to create the Course (what we call a Job) in TutorCruncher. Once you add Bobbin to a Job in TutorCruncher, the Job details and all of its Lessons are pulled through to Bobbin automatically. You can then access them within Bobbin to build Lesson Plans, deliver Lessons, and more.
If you use TutorCruncher for scheduling, Administrators can now also book new Lessons on those Courses from inside Bobbin, rather than having to go back to TutorCruncher to add them.
If an appointment is deleted in TutorCruncher after its online Lesson has started, Bobbin keeps the Lesson along with its attendance, transcript and recording.
The Lesson lifecycle
Every Lesson moves through three stages: Planned, Awaiting Report and Complete. If your organization has report approval turned on, there's one extra stage, Awaiting Approval, between Awaiting Report and Complete.
Planned: The Lesson is scheduled but hasn't happened yet. The Tutor can use this time to create a Lesson Plan.
Awaiting Report: The Lesson has ended. Bobbin is processing the transcript and generating AI insights, and the Tutor is emailed once they're ready to complete the Lesson Report.
Awaiting Approval (only if report approval is on): The Tutor has submitted the report, and it's waiting for an Administrator to review and approve it before it's sent to the Client. See Creating a Lesson Report for how to approve reports.
Complete: The Lesson Report has been sent to the Client, and the Lesson is fully closed out. Completed Lessons, and their reports, transcripts and notes, are protected from deletion.
Note: Report approval is managed in TutorCruncher. It still appears in Bobbin under Workspace > Settings > Lessons with your current setting, but it's read-only there and can only be changed in TutorCruncher.
Lesson planning
When a Lesson is first created, it appears in the Planned state. This is the preparation phase - the Lesson hasn't happened yet, and the Tutor can use this time to create a Lesson plan.
A planned Lesson won't have a Lesson plan by default. To generate one, click the Create Lesson Plan button.
Some Lesson plan prompts will be available to you already, you can select one of those and edit it or write your own prompt. There are also some Writing Tips to help you.
Bobbin will create a structured plan based on the Course Outline and the Student's needs, covering sections like Learning Objectives, a timed Lesson Structure (warm-up, guided practice, independent work, wrap-up), Understanding Checks, and suggestions for extra study.
Note: Administrators and Tutors can also download and save the Lesson Plan as a PDF by clicking the three dots on the Lesson Plan.
Choosing how detailed AI content is
Administrators can choose the style Bobbin uses for Lesson plans, summaries and Student feedback across the organization, under Workspace > Settings > AI content style:
Detailed: The full sectioned plan, covering objectives, structure, teaching strategies and assessment. Best for planning ahead and for sharing with parents or a cover Tutor.
Structured: A timed run-sheet of blocks, each saying what happens, why it's there and what to check before moving on. Best for following live during the Lesson.
Concise: One screen with the goal, objectives and strategies, the shape of the hour and what to check. Best for a quick read just before the Lesson starts.
Content written after you change the style, including regenerated and AI-edited content, uses the new style.
Creating a Lesson from a Course
When you create a Lesson from a Course, you can pick the objectives from the Course Outline that this Lesson should cover, and have Bobbin draft the Lesson plan around them. It saves writing a prompt from scratch and keeps the plan tied to what's still left to teach on the Course.
Where a Student has had a Progress Report with Next steps for that Course, those next steps are fed into the plan for their following Lesson, so the plan picks up where the last one left off.
Joining the Lesson
When it's time for the Lesson to begin, click the Join Space button in the top-right corner to enter the whiteboard. Tutors and Administrators enter the classroom from a signed-in Bobbin page, so there's nothing extra to log in to.
In the classroom, the Tutor starts the Lesson and lets Students in from a waiting list. See The tutor-led classroom for how this works. You can also see every Lesson that's running, and who has joined, on the Live lessons page.
A few things worth knowing about the space:
One link per person for the whole Course: Each person's classroom link works for every Lesson on the Course, so a Student can keep using the same link from week to week. A link still signs in whoever opens it as that person, which is why links shouldn't be passed around - attendance and Lesson insights depend on it. Tutors see the join links for their own Students.
Parents pick their child: When a Client joins from a Lesson page or an email, they land on the Course's classroom page and choose which of their children is joining.
Your files are in there with you: The library panel inside the space gives Tutors your organization's shared files, the Course's own files and their personal library, without leaving the whiteboard.
A second device: Tutors and Administrators can bring an iPad or other device into a Lesson they're teaching, using Add a device in the classroom. See Using a second device in a Lesson.
Brief interruptions recover: If our classroom provider is momentarily unavailable, you'll see a clear message inviting you to try again shortly rather than an error.
Where people go when a Lesson ends
When someone leaves an online Lesson, or the Tutor ends it for everyone, they see a button. By default it says Continue and takes them back to that Lesson's page in Bobbin.
To send people somewhere else, such as a feedback form, go to Workspace > Settings > Lessons and fill in Link to show when a lesson ends (it must start with https://) and, if you like, Button text (up to 40 characters). Clear the fields to go back to the default.
In-lesson chat
Anything typed into the chat during a Lesson is kept and shown on the Lesson alongside the transcript, and it's taken into account when Bobbin writes up the Lesson. That means a Lesson taught largely through the chat box still produces a useful summary and set of insights.
AI insights
Once a Lesson has been completed, Bobbin transcribes it and uses that transcription to generate multiple insights into the Lesson, including:
Summary - A general description of what happened during the Lesson
Main Subjects Covered - What subjects were covered during the Lesson
Skills Practiced - What particular skills were practiced during the Lesson
There are also insights on each Student in the Lesson such as:
Strengths Observed - What the Student did particularly well during the Lesson
Areas for Improvement - Things to work on in the future
Next Steps - What the Student should work on before the next Lesson. This is an optional section and can be turned on via Workspace > Settings > Lessons > Lesson Insights, and the same next steps are consolidated onto the Student's Progress Report.
Feedback is available for each Tutor in the Lesson
Teaching Strengths - Where the Tutor did particularly well during the Lesson
Areas for Improvement - Things to work on in the future
Whether Tutors can see their own feedback is controlled by Show tutor performance feedback to tutors under Workspace > Settings > Lessons. Administrators can always see it.
Objectives Covered
Lesson insights can also show which of the Course objectives the Lesson actually covered, grouped by module. It gives you a straightforward way to see teaching against the Course Outline rather than having to tick topics off by hand. Each organization can turn this panel on or off via Workspace > Settings > Lessons > Lesson Insights.
Lessons that stopped and restarted
If a Lesson is interrupted and picked up again, or runs across more than one session, the insights cover the whole Lesson rather than only the final stretch. A transcript that arrives while insights are still being generated is included too.
You can ask for the insights to be produced again using Regenerate insights. The button responds straight away and the work continues in the background, so you don't have to wait on the page.
Note: If Bobbin can't produce usable content for a section, for example when there's very little to go on, nothing is saved over what's already there and you'll be asked to try again. Your existing content is never replaced with a blank section.
Lesson transcript & recording
The transcript of the Lesson can be found under the Transcript tab of a Lesson, along with the Lesson recording.
Alongside the transcript and Lesson recording, the Lesson details page also includes Session Analytics - a breakdown of each participant's talk time and any periods of silence during the Lesson.
Two organization-level settings control recordings, both under Workspace > Settings > Lessons:
Days to keep lesson recordings: How long recordings are kept before they're permanently deleted, up to 365 days. This covers both online Lesson recordings and in-person recording audio. By default it applies to recordings made from now on; tick Apply to existing recordings to bring your back catalogue onto the same window too. Transcripts and AI insights are always kept - only the recording itself is removed.
Roles that can view recordings: Which roles can open recordings, transcripts and chapters. Administrators always have access regardless of this setting.
Individual Students can also opt out of being recorded, or of having their recordings shared. See Recording and sharing opt-outs.
Completing a Lesson without a recording
A Lesson doesn't need a usable recording to be finished off. If a recording is missing or didn't come through, the Lesson can still be marked complete and billed as normal - you'll just be writing the report yourself rather than starting from AI-generated insights.
If a classroom session ran but wasn't matched to its Lesson, you can link it from Unlinked sessions. See the Unlinked sessions article.
Internal notes
Each Lesson has a Notes tab, next to Lesson Plan, where Administrators can record Internal notes about that session. They're marked Only visible to admins in the app - Tutors, Students and Clients can't see them, and they never form part of the Lesson Report.
They're available from the moment a Lesson is created, so they work for something you need to remember beforehand - a room change, a note of what was agreed with a parent - as well as anything worth recording afterwards.
Activity
The Lesson details page includes an activity log showing the exact times the Tutor and Student joined and left the Lesson. It shows every join and leave, even on long or busy Lessons.
Attendance is worked out from this activity, and handles the awkward cases: a Student who refreshes, changes device or briefly loses connection is still recorded as attending, someone who looks in early and leaves again isn't wrongly marked present, and a participant who drops out and rejoins part way through counts as having attended. Changes synced from TutorCruncher appear in the log as system activity rather than being attributed to a person.
Emails about Lessons
Because your organization is connected to TutorCruncher, TutorCruncher sends the lesson-scheduled, reminder and rescheduled or canceled emails, using its own settings. Those settings don't appear in Bobbin, so if someone isn't getting Lesson reminders, check TutorCruncher rather than Bobbin.
The one Lesson email setting you'll see in Bobbin, under Workspace > Settings > Emails, is:
Send attendance emails after lessons start - Administrators and Clients get an email ten minutes after a Lesson starts showing who is present and absent. For online Lessons, it includes a Join lesson button that takes Administrators straight into the classroom and takes Clients to the Course's classroom page. Individual Administrators can also opt out from their own profile.
Lesson Report and Attendance emails can also be turned on or off for an individual Client and Student. See Managing Client Email Notification Preferences.