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.
The Lesson lifecycle
A Lesson in Bobbin moves through three stages: Planned, Awaiting Report, and Complete. Each stage unlocks different features and actions, and the sections below walk you through what to expect at each point.
Using report approval? If your organization has report approval turned on, there is an extra step between Awaiting Report and Complete i.e. Awaiting Approval. Once a Tutor submits their reports, the reports are held for an Administrator to approve before being sent to Clients, and the Lesson only moves to Complete once its reports have been approved. See Creating a Lesson Report for how to review and approve reports.
Where you turn it on depends on how your organization is set up. If you're not connected to TutorCruncher, an Administrator turns it on in Bobbin under Workspace > Settings > Lessons. If you are connected, the setting is managed in TutorCruncher: it still appears in Bobbin showing your current value, 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.
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 on it, 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.
A few things worth knowing about the space:
Each join link belongs to one person: A Student's link signs in whoever opens it as that Student, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Bobbin can email the people on a Lesson at four points, all controlled by Administrators via Workspace > Settings > Emails:
Send lesson-scheduled emails when lessons are created - the Lesson details go out when it's booked.
Send reminder emails before lessons start - a reminder shortly beforehand, in each person's own timezone.
Send emails when lessons are rescheduled or canceled - participants are told what changed.
Send attendance emails after lessons start - Administrators and Clients get an email ten minutes after a Lesson starts showing who is present and absent. Individual Administrators can also opt out from their own profile.
Connected to TutorCruncher? The scheduled, reminder and reschedule emails only go to people managed directly in Bobbin. Students, Tutors and Clients synced from TutorCruncher are emailed by TutorCruncher instead, using its own settings - so if someone isn't getting Lesson reminders, check there rather than here.
Lesson Report and Attendance emails can also be turned on or off for an individual Client and Student. See Managing Client Email Notification Preferences.