The Lessons page shows all the Lessons you are assigned to - past, present, and upcoming - in a single searchable list. Click on any Lesson to open its detail page, where you'll find everything related to that session.
The Lesson lifecycle
Every Lesson moves through three stages:
Planned
The Lesson is scheduled but hasn't happened yet. This is the preparation phase - use this time to create your Lesson Plan.
Awaiting Report
The Lesson has ended. Bobbin is processing the transcript and generating AI insights. Once ready (usually within 5 minutes), you'll receive an email prompting you to complete the Lesson Report.
Awaiting Approval
The Lesson Report is waiting to be reviewed and approved by the Administrator.
Complete
The Lesson Report has been sent to the Client. The session is fully closed out.
Creating a Lesson Plan
Before a Lesson begins, it's worth putting together a Lesson Plan so you know exactly what you'll cover. You can do this any time while the Lesson is in the Planned stage.
A Lesson Plan lets you set out the topics and objectives for the session, helping you stay organized and keeping the Lesson aligned with the Course Outline.
If you create the Lesson from a Course, you can pick which of the Course objectives it should cover and have Bobbin draft the plan around them. Where your Student's last Progress Report included Next steps, those are fed into the plan for this Lesson too, so it picks up where you left off.
For step-by-step instructions, see Creating a Lesson Plan.
Joining a Lesson
When it's time for a Lesson to begin, click the Join Space button in the top-right corner of the Lesson page. This opens the LessonSpace whiteboard where the session takes place. You go in from your signed-in Bobbin page, so there's nothing separate to log in to.
Sharing join links with your Students
The Lesson page also shows the join links for the Students on that Lesson, so you can send one on if someone can't find their invitation. You'll only see links for your own Students.
Each link belongs to one Student - anyone who opens it joins the Lesson as that Student, which is what keeps attendance and the Lesson insights accurate. Send each Student their own link rather than passing one around.
Your files inside the Lesson
The library panel in the Lesson space gives you your agency's shared files and folders, the files attached to the Course you're teaching, and your own personal library — all without leaving the whiteboard. You can also attach shared files to the Courses you teach from the resources page.
Note: If our classroom provider is briefly unavailable when you try to open a space, you'll see a clear message asking you to try again shortly. Nothing is lost — the space recovers the next time someone joins.
In-lesson chat
Anything typed into the chat during a Lesson is kept and shown on the Lesson alongside the transcript, and Bobbin takes it into account when writing up the session. So a Lesson taught largely through the chat box still produces a useful summary and set of insights.
AI insights
After a Lesson is completed and the transcript has been processed, Bobbin generates the following insights:
About the Lesson:
Summary - what happened during the session
Main Subjects Covered
Skills Practiced
Objectives Covered - which of the Course objectives the Lesson covered, grouped by module (if enabled by your organization)
About each Student:
Strengths Observed
Areas for Improvement
Next Steps - what the Student should work on before their next Lesson. These are also gathered onto the Student's Progress Report.
About you as a Tutor (if enabled by your organization):
Teaching Strengths
Areas for Improvement
These insights feed directly into the Lesson Report, saving you time when writing up your notes.
If a Lesson stopped and restarted, or ran across more than one session, the insights cover the whole Lesson rather than just the last part of it. You can ask for them to be produced again with Regenerate insights — the button responds straight away and the work carries on in the background.
Note: If Bobbin can't produce usable content for a section, nothing is saved over what's already there and you'll be asked to try again. Anything you've already written is never replaced with a blank section.
Transcript and recording
The Transcript tab contains the full transcript of the Lesson alongside the recording (if enabled by your organization). You'll also find Session Analytics here - a breakdown of each participant's talk time and any periods of silence during the session.
Your agency sets how long recordings are kept and which roles can see them. That setting covers the transcript and audio as well as the recording itself, so if you can't see one of them, it will be because of how your agency has set this up. Once a recording passes the retention period it's deleted, but the transcript, insights and Reports are kept.
Recording an in-person Lesson
If your agency has opted into the in-person beta, you can record a face-to-face Lesson from the Bobbin mobile app and get the same transcript and insights you'd get from an online session.
A few things to expect:
You confirm who's who first. Before insights are generated, you're asked to check the speaker labels on the recording — matching each voice to the right person. Bobbin has a go at this itself and matches similar names more reliably than it used to, but anything it isn't sure about comes to you to confirm. An Administrator can do this review in the web app instead.
You won't be asked to redo it. If the Lesson's details change while the recording is still being transcribed, your speaker matching is kept rather than being thrown away.
A weak signal is fine. Recordings upload robustly on a patchy phone connection, and when you end a recording Bobbin waits a moment for anything still uploading to finish.
Very short recordings aren't transcribed. A recording under about four and a half minutes is treated as too short to write up.
The same retention applies. In-person audio is kept for the same period your agency has set for online recordings.
If there's no recording
A Lesson doesn't need a usable recording to be finished. If the recording is missing or didn't come through, you can still mark the Lesson complete and write the report yourself — you'll just be starting from a blank page rather than from AI-generated insights. See Completing a Lesson Report.
Activity log
The Activity tab shows the exact times each Tutor and Student joined and left the Lesson, providing a clear record of attendance.
Attendance copes with the messy cases: a Student who refreshes the page, switches device or briefly drops off the connection is still recorded as attending, and someone who leaves and rejoins part way through counts as having been there.
Reminders and the mobile app
You can be emailed shortly before each Lesson starts, in your own timezone, as well as when a Lesson is first scheduled, moved or canceled. Your agency controls which of these go out.
Note: If your agency uses TutorCruncher, these emails come from TutorCruncher rather than Bobbin, so they'll look like the rest of your TutorCruncher notifications.
The Bobbin mobile app can also send you a daily push notification summarizing the Lessons you have that day. It's switched off unless your agency has enabled it.
Teaching for more than one agency? If you work with several organizations that use Bobbin, you can switch between them, and your choice sticks as you move around the app. You'll only see the Lessons, Students and AI content belonging to the agency you're currently in.