Essential Jargon

When creating a Class, additional Tutors can be added alongside the Main Tutor for each module; they will be able to access the same course material, set and grade assignments, but they will NOT have the ability to edit the course content. Imagine the Additional Tutors as being regular teachers who can suggest skipping a chapter on the book assigned for the course, but who are not allowed to alter the book.

Administrators can create global school-wide announcements which will be displayed on every user's home screen (only the three most recent) and on a dedicated page (Resources > Announcements).

Think of announcements as the school's official notice board (for 'unofficial' notice boards, students and tutors can create dedicated Channels).

These announcements can also be scheduled to automatically publish themselves and then automatically disappear on certain dates.

Facilities (rooms, classrooms, studios, venues) and Equipment are collectively defined as Assets. Not every school will be adding a list of equipment or choose to enable online booking of assets by students, but a list of rooms and buildings is normally required for timetabling purposes.

Assignments are a specialised type of Page: they can contain a rubric, and they can be set (i.e. given) to all the students enrolled in a course. When assignments are set, they create special Calendar Assignment events, which help students and tutors be reminded of deadlines, and contain direct links for submission and grading.

Setting assignments also creates gradebooks for each student.

Just like Pages, Assignments can be stored in Beebop, to be used and reused for years.

Pages and Assignments can be added to any Module and within each Module they can be further organised by Section.

Discussion Channels offer functionalities similar to Slack, Discord, Facebook Groups, Microsoft Teams, etc, with the difference that these channels are not open to the outside world and that Administrators have always control over them.

Channels can be created automatically for every class and module, to facilitate social learning between lectures, and can also be created for non curricular use by any student or member of staff, to promote engagement and community.

A Module's Content is like a book: it includes Pages, Assignments, Images, Files, and these can be organised using chapters

By default, each new Module has only one chapter but there is no limit to how many can be added.

Content can be moved from one chapter to another, and the order of chapters can also be rearranged via drag and drop.

Chapters can be visible, hidden, or locked until the course reaches a certain stage.
Students can see the title of locked chapters but not their content, while hidden chapters and their content are completely invisible.

The group of students who are registered on the same course (and the same course block) during the same term. For example, all the students who are studying the first year of a given degree, and who are expected to be attending the same lectures at the same time in the same location.

Not to be confused with the actual Lecture ‘event’ that takes place in a classroom or online (see ‘Hour / Period’).

Also not to be confused with the entire cohort of students who completed their studies in a certain year (i.e. the class of ‘69).

A permanent sub-group within a Class.

When the number of students enrolled in a course exceeds the maximum size allowed for a class, it becomes necessary to create multiple classes which will run in parallel during the same school term.

When two or more classes are created for the same course and term, each class becomes a ‘section’ of the whole group enrolled for that course.

Sections are automatically labelled by a single letter (A, B, C, … , etc) and this Section label becomes part of the class name.

Not to be confused with User Groups created just for the sake of a limited number of lectures or assignments during the term.

A course is the entire set of studies leading to the final qualification.

In Beebop, a course is made of a course definition (course name, code, description, cover image) and course content (a list of modules, arranged in one or more course blocks).

Administrators have the option to organise the course content in one or more blocks, to reflect how the course spans over multiple school terms (AKA study blocks, or semesters, or quadrimester).

Any event created on Beebop's calendar, whether it is just an all-day reminder, a scheduled lecture, or a room booking.

Events types:

• Personal Events
  The only type of event which students can create, it can be used for reminders, online booking of rooms and equipment, and -by adding other users as participants- for collaborative projects.

• Lecture Events
  These events generate 'lecture' attendance registers and can be linked to course modules.

• Self-Registration Events
  These events allow a list of invited users to add themselves as participants.
  Attendance registers can also be created for these events but they do not contribute to the 'lecture' attendance reports.

• Other School Events
  This is meant for any type of school activity which is not strictly a lecture. It can also generate attendance registers, but it cannot be linked to a course module.

• Meeting Events
  This type of event exists so that staff meetings can be easily found and isolated even in a busy calendar.

• Global Events
  Global events are unique in the sense that they are ALWAYS visible to ALL USERS.

• Assignment Reminder Events
  This type of event is created automatically when assignments are given.

A division of time in a day, allocated for lectures and other events.
On Beebop you can indicate how many lecture 'hours' per week should be scheduled for each Module (this is used by the timetabling assistant feature, it it's enabled on your account). In this case, the number of 'hours' actually means the number of lecture units, so two lectures are indicated as two hours, whether your actual lectures last 40 minutes or 1.5 hours.

These are special discussion channels, created automatically for each student, which can be used to document a student's learning journey, and shared with mentors and other students to create evidence of work and progression.

Educational stage, also referred to as ‘grade’, ‘form’, or ‘year’.

On Beebop, courses modules can be given a level; course blocks and class names can be given labels that match the same levels, making it easy to see who is studying what at any given time.

Users can also be given levels, although these are meant as ‘access level’ for booking policies, and can be used independently from the educational level used for courses.

In the context of creating or editing a Class, the Main Tutor is the person who is ultimately responsible for the course content given to a group of students enrolled on a course module.

Messages sent within Beebop have the benefit over email that Administrators and Tutors can always see exactly when each message was opened by each user, and who has not opened a message.

Email notifications are also sent automatically to the message recipient, to ensure they reach even those who don't check in on Beebop very often.

A module is one of the units that make a complete course. Typically a module is defined for a self-contained topic and could be a short course in itself, with its own set of learning outcomes and assessment criteria.

In Beebop, a module is made of a module definition (module name, code, description, cover image and other meta-data) and module content (a list of pages and assignments, arranged in one or more chapters).

When a Module is created, the Module Content is likely to be empty.
Adding a list of Pages and Assignments, arranged in a certain order, creates the first 'version' of this content.

When someone is assigned to be the Main Tutor for this Module for a group of students in a given term (i.e. a Class, using Beebop's terminology), this Main Tutor can choose to use and edit this version of the content, or create a new one, and each version remains available for future use.

This means that every Tutor can inherit a 'master' content and then customise it as required for each class they teach. It also means that when a Tutor makes significant improvements to the initial content, this version can be elevated to become the master template for all future versions.

Having multiple versions also means being able to offer this content at different levels for different uses, for example taking a module that was created for a degree certificate and using it for a self-contained short course by making some minor modifications to the list of pages and assignments in its content.

Looking at Resources > Modules and clicking on any one of them, Administrators can manage all the versions that were created and see which ones are in use in which class. Tutors can only see the list of Modules they own.

Beebop sends automatic internal notifications to keep users up to date on recent activities that may involve them. These notifications are visible in the Notification panel, and are also sent as system notifications on devices that support this functionality (Android phones, desktop browsers where the user has allowed Beebop to send notifications).

Pages are individual documents stored in Beebop which can be used and reused over the years and across multiple courses.

Pages are created in Beebop's text editor, which features many formatting options and the ability to include images, links, and embed external media (YouTube, Vimeo, Spotify, Soundcloud, and many others).

Unlike PDF documents or PowerPoint presentations, Pages are live documents which can be updated by the author, so that any improvement can be passed to all the students who have access to them, including students from past courses who still have access to their course content.

Pages can be created by any Tutor and Administrator, and can be easily organised using Tags.
By default, Administrators can see all the pages created on Beebop, while Tutors can only see the ones they have created themselves, but it is possible to share Pages with others, so Tutors and Administrators can make certain pages visible by other Tutors when required.

For students to be able to see these Pages, they must be added to the Content of a Module.

On Beebop, each calendar event must have at least one ‘person in charge’. The main reason for this is to have accountability when events have multiple participants or are linked to rooms and equipment.
For example, if a student books a room and invites another five students (all listed as participants) it must still be clear who is ultimately responsible for the booking.

For Lecture events, the person in charge takes the additional meaning of being identifiable as the Tutor running the event.
In this case the person in charge is expected to fill the attendance register (if there is one) and will receive automatic reminders from Beebop if this is not done by the end of the day.
The role of being the person in charge is normally given automatically to the user who created the event, and cannot be changed by students and tutors.

Administrators, on the other hand, can create hundreds of events and then give the role of ‘person in charge’ to one or more tutors. Mass actions on the Calendar make it easy to reassign tutors for multiple events all at once.

School administrators can create special categories to group self-registration events, so that students can filter through these categories to find what they are looking for even when there are hundreds of events created every week.

Special user groups automatically generated and maintained by Beebop.

Beebop generates smart groups for each class and for each elective module within a class, as well as a global group for all the active students. When students are added or removed from a class, they are also automatically added or removed from the respective groups. Additionally, smart groups will archive themselves at the end of the term.

Academic divisions of the school year, also known as: Study Block / Semester / Trimester / Quarter.

On Beebop you need to have defined at least one Term for each school year before anything else can happen.

If necessary, it is possible to create multiple overlapping terms, if your school offers different courses that happen simultaneously, each with its own term divisions.

Professors, Teachers, Teaching Assistants, Mentors, Instructors… anyone who is teaching or aiding the learning process in some way.

Any person registered on Beebop, whether they are staff or students.

Any group of users created by a school administrator to facilitate sending messages or adding participants to calendar events. These groups have to be maintained manually (i.e. administrators must add and remove participants, and archive the group when there is no more need for it).

Users can have multiple roles (for example senior students who are also teaching assistants, or administrators who are also teaching), in which case they will have the ability to switch between them to access the features that are relevant for each user role.

Users can also be given levels, although these are meant as ‘access level’ for booking policies, and can be used independently from the educational level used for courses.

The following User Roles are available

• Student (aka Learner, Pupil, Delegate, etc...)
• Alumni (former student)
• Supervisor
• Senior Supervisor (Junior Administrator)
• Tutor (aka Lecturer, Teacher, Instructor, Professor, Teaching Assistant, etc...)
• Administrator
• Super Administrator

Note that each role gives access only to the pages that are needed for that role. For example, Administrators do not have access to the features needed to teach a class. Users with multiple roles need to switch between them depending on what they are doing.