Lessons are the individual teaching sessions in Bobbin - a scheduled session between a Tutor and one or more Students. In an organization that runs Bobbin on its own, an Administrator creates and schedules Lessons directly in Bobbin. Every Lesson belongs to a Course.

The Lessons page shows every Lesson - past, present and future - in a single searchable table. Click any Lesson to open its details page, where you'll find the Lesson plan, AI-generated insights and the transcript.

Because every Lesson belongs to a Course, make sure the Course exists first, with the right Students and Tutors on it (see Courses & Course Outlines). You then create the Lesson against that Course, choosing:

Once created, the Lesson appears in the Planned stage, ready for a Lesson plan.

If your organization has in-person Lessons turned on, you can mark each Course and Lesson as Online or In person. When you change a Course, you can choose to update its planned Lessons that haven't started yet at the same time.

The Course and Lesson lists, and the Calendar, then have a Delivery filter so you can narrow them to online or in-person Lessons.

Every Lesson moves through three stages: Planned, Awaiting Report and Complete. If you've turned on report approval, there's one extra stage, Awaiting Approval, between Awaiting Report and Complete.

See Creating a Lesson Report for how reports are completed and approved.

A planned Lesson won't have a Lesson plan by default. To generate one, click Create Lesson Plan. You can pick one of the suggested prompts and edit it, or write your own, with Writing Tips to help.

Bobbin creates a structured plan based on the Course Outline and the Student's needs, covering sections like Learning Objectives, a timed Lesson Structure, Understanding Checks, and suggestions for extra study. Administrators and Tutors can download the plan as a PDF from the three dots on the Lesson Plan.

When you create a Lesson from a Course, you can pre-select the objectives you want to cover, and Bobbin drafts the Lesson Plan around them. Where the Student's last Progress Report included Next steps for that Course, those are fed into the plan too, so it picks up from what was agreed last time.

Under Workspace > Settings > AI content style, you can choose the style Bobbin uses for Lesson plans, summaries and Student feedback across the organization:

Content written after you change the style, including regenerated and AI-edited content, uses the new style.

When it's time for the Lesson to begin, click Join Space in the top-right corner to enter the whiteboard. Tutors and Administrators enter 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. You can see every Lesson that's running, and who has joined, on the Live lessons page. Tutors and Administrators can also bring a second device, such as an iPad, into a Lesson. See Using a second device in a Lesson.

Each Student has their own classroom link for each Course, and the same link works for every Lesson on that Course, so a Student can keep using it from week to week. A link belongs to one Student — anyone who opens it joins as that Student — so links shouldn't be passed around. It's what keeps attendance and the Lesson insights accurate.

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.

Tutors can see the join links for their own Students on the Lesson page, so they can resend one to a family who can't find it. Administrators can also download every Student's links, grouped by Client, or email each Client their own Students' links: on the Courses page, click Export join links. See Sending Clients their classroom links.

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. If our classroom provider is momentarily unavailable, you'll see a message inviting you to try again shortly rather than an error.

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.

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.

Once a Lesson has been completed, Bobbin transcribes it and generates insights, including a Summary, the Main Subjects Covered and Skills Practiced. For each Student you'll see Strengths Observed, Areas for Improvement and, if switched on under Workspace > Settings > Lessons > Lesson Insights, Next Steps, which are also gathered onto the Student's Progress Report.

Each Tutor gets feedback on their Teaching Strengths and Areas for Improvement. 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.

Insights can also show which of the Course objectives the Lesson covered, grouped by module. Turn this panel on or off under Workspace > Settings > Lessons > Lesson Insights. It's a cross-check rather than an automatic update — Course Coverage on the outline still moves when someone ticks a topic by hand.

If a Lesson is interrupted and picked up again, the insights cover the whole Lesson. You can ask for them to be produced again with Regenerate insights; the work carries on in the background. If Bobbin can't produce usable content for a section, your existing content is never replaced with a blank section.

The Transcript tab holds the transcript and the Lesson recording, along with Session Analytics - a breakdown of each participant's talk time and any periods of silence.

Two settings control recordings, both under Workspace > Settings > Lessons:

Individual Students can also opt out of being recorded, or of having their recordings shared. See Recording and sharing opt-outs.

A Lesson doesn't need a usable recording to be completed and billed - the Tutor just writes the report themselves. If a classroom session ran but wasn't matched to its Lesson, you can link it from Unlinked sessions.

Each Lesson has a Notes tab where Administrators can record Internal notes. They're only visible to Administrators and never form part of the Lesson Report. They're available from the moment a Lesson is created.

The Lesson page includes an activity log showing every time each Tutor and Student joined and left, even on long or busy Lessons. Attendance is worked out from this, and copes with the awkward cases: a Student who refreshes, changes device or briefly loses connection is still recorded as attending, and someone who looks in early and leaves again isn't wrongly marked present.

Because you manage everyone in Bobbin, Bobbin does the emailing. Administrators control which of these go out under Workspace > Settings > Emails:

For online Lessons, the scheduled, reminder, rescheduled and attendance emails include a Join lesson button that takes each person straight to the Lesson. A Student's button uses their own classroom link, so they don't need to sign in, and their email asks them not to forward it. Tutors, Clients and Administrators are asked to sign in if they aren't already. In-person Lessons don't get a join button.

Emails about an upcoming Lesson also include a calendar invite, which updates itself if the Lesson is moved or canceled. Removing someone from a Lesson withdraws their invite, and deleting a Course removes its upcoming Lessons from everyone's calendar.

A Student added without an email address won't receive any of these, though their Client still will.

Every Tutor on a Course can add, edit, delete and complete its Lessons, and Administrators can always manage them. You can edit a Lesson's details or remove it while it's still in the Planned stage. Completed Lessons can't be deleted.

If reschedule emails are switched on, moving or canceling a Lesson tells its participants what changed.