Course
A course is the top content level in Brian. For example, a course might be called "Chemistry 101". For each course, you will define a course level, course language, and a subject focus.
Important: A "course" is not the same thing as a "class" because its content can be made available to different classes (parallelly or sequentially). If you wish to do so, you create a new "course timeframe" within the course.
The picture below shows the students' view of the course overview. Each "brain in a jar" designates a separate course this particular student is enrolled in.
Course Unit
A course can be divided into any number of sections. Brian calls these sections "Course Units". They are used to organize the content – a Course Unit may contain all the materials for a certain temporal portion of the course ("Week 1") or all the materials belonging to a certain area of study ("The Causes of the Russian Revolution"). In the course “My First Brian”, for example, the first module is called “Get to know Brian”.
The learning units are displayed as hills in the learning environment.
Activities
Within a course unit, four different activities can be added: an Info Page, a Quiz, an AI Dialogue, or a Chatbot. They fall into three categories: Content (Info Page), Exercise (Quiz, AI Dialogue), and Tool (Chatbot).
Info Page
The Info Page is used to deliver and embed content. It lets you integrate text, images, videos, files, and external content directly into a Brian course. This means you can not only convey information but also seamlessly embed tasks and activities from other tools or websites into the learning path.
In the learning environment, Info Pages are displayed as rectangles with a document icon.
Quizzes
Quizzes are catalogs of questions based on a document that has either been supplied by the teacher or created via Brian's AI. Each quiz contains single- or multiple-choice questions and associated answer-, and explanation-sets. Any number of topics can be created within each module
In the learning environment, quizzes are displayed as rectangles with a progress circle.
Context, Questions, Explanations
Each quiz has an associated context (a document, video, image, etc. referenced by the questions).
Each quiz consists of question-, answer-, and explanation-sets that can be customized by AI or manually.
AI-Dialogue
Like quizzes, AI-Dialogues are exercises that are anchored in a course unit's learning path. A course unit can contain an unlimited number of AI-Dialogues. Each dialogue contains an exercise that requires free-text answers. Students work on these exercises in collaboration with a chatbot. The exercises are created by the teacher – most easily with the help of a chatbot that guides you through the creation process.
In the learning environment, the AI dialogues are displayed in the form of speech bubbles.
See also: AI Dialogue: Concept and Creation
Chatbot
A chatbot is a tool. Unlike quizzes and AI Dialogues, it is not a task with a completion point, feedback, and evaluation, but rather a free-form chat. Chatbots can be freely defined in their functionality and work best where the goal is to provide information to students or invite them to independently explore a specific topic or skill.
In the learning environment, chatbots are displayed as rectangles with a sparkle icon.
See also: What is a chatbot?