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Getting oriented

The instructor console lives at yourorg.rukialabs.com/instructor. You reach it from the mode switcher at the top of the sidebar in any console, or by going straight there.

It is where you author content, run your classes and grade work. It is deliberately narrower than the admin console: it shows you the courses and cohorts you are attached to, rather than everything the organisation runs.

Your dashboard

Four things, chosen because they are the four that change daily:

New submissions. Work handed in and waiting for a mark. This is the one that should drive your day.

Pending attendance. Sessions that have happened and whose register has not been taken. Attendance often counts towards a final grade, so an unmarked register is a missing mark rather than a missing formality.

Upcoming classes. Your next sessions, with their links.

Active students. Who has been working, and who has gone quiet. The second group is the useful one.

The sidebar

EntryWhat it is for
My DashboardThe summary above
Track my StudentsYour cohorts, their enrolments and their grades
Review AssignmentsThe grading queue
Manage ClassesScheduling, attendance and recordings
Manage CoursesAuthoring: courses, topics, lessons, quizzes, assignments
My AnnouncementsMessages you have sent, and sending new ones
My Instructor ProfileYour public profile

Instructor, manager, admin

Three staff roles, and the difference between them is worth ten seconds.

Instructor teaches and grades. You get this console.

Manager runs cohorts, courses and enrolments without necessarily teaching. Managers get the admin console as well as this one.

Admin is everything, including people, roles and organisation settings.

You may hold more than one. The mode switcher shows only the consoles your roles actually open, so if there is no switcher in your sidebar, you hold the instructor role alone.

The full breakdown is in Roles and permissions.

Where the boundary sits

Some things you will want are in the admin console rather than here, and that is where to ask for them if you do not hold an admin or manager role:

ThingWhere it lives
Creating a cohortAdmin → Manage Cohorts
Attaching a course to a cohortAdmin → Manage Cohorts
Enrolling learnersAdmin → Manage Cohorts
Assigning you to a courseAdmin → Manage Cohorts, on the offering
Grade scales and bandsAdmin → More Operations → Grading Bands
Inviting peopleAdmin → Manage Users

Everything to do with content and marking is here.

Courses, cohorts and offerings

The single most useful distinction in the product:

  • A course is the material. You write it once.
  • A cohort is a group of people with dates.
  • An offering is one cohort running one course. Teaching staff, the class schedule and every grade belong to the offering.

So the same course taught to three cohorts is three offerings with three sets of marks and three timetables, and editing the course changes the material for all three. That is usually what you want, and it is worth being conscious of when a cohort is mid-way through.

Rukia, in the instructor console

The assistant is available here too, and it does two things beyond answering questions:

Course builder. Drafts lessons and assignments from a description. It produces a draft into the editor and never saves anything itself — content reaches the platform only when you press Save. See Writing lessons.

Pre-review of submissions. Where your organisation has it switched on, an AI review is prepared for each submission. You approve it, edit it, or reject it. It is never sent to a learner without a person deciding to send it. See Grading submissions.