Student Experience and Attempts

When a lesson is assigned, learners do not enter through Studio. They enter through their student lessons view.

Understanding that experience helps you build lessons that feel clear and usable in practice.

Student avatars

Every student gets an auto-generated robot avatar so they're easy to tell apart at a glance in your roster, classroom views, and student detail pages. Avatars are deterministic — the same student always sees the same robot, on every device — and cannot be uploaded or edited. This keeps the experience kid-safe and consistent without asking learners to manage profile pictures.

What learners see first

Students see a list of assigned lessons.

That list tells them:

• Which lessons are available
• When each one was assigned

This means the lesson title matters. Clear names make a student’s list easier to understand and easier to act on.

A student who has joined your classroom but has nothing assigned yet sees "Nothing assigned yet", so they know they're in the right place and only need to wait for you. Only a student who isn't in any classroom is told to ask you for an invite.

A small Berdee bird keeps them company here. It waves the first time they open their list in a session, and when their To do list is empty it settles into a nest beside "you're all caught up." It is decoration only: it sits next to the words, never in front of anything, and stays still for learners whose device asks for reduced motion.

On a phone or tablet

Students can open their lessons on a phone or a tablet as well as a computer. On a narrow screen, their classrooms and account menu move behind a menu button at the top of the page, so the lesson list and the lesson itself get the whole width. A lesson's scene shrinks to fit the screen without being cropped, so on a phone held upright it is small. When a student holds a phone or tablet upright, the lesson shows a short note, "Turn your device sideways to make the lesson bigger." It goes away when they turn the device or tap Got it. If your students mostly use phones, still keep text and buttons large enough to read and tap at that size.

The Fullscreen button in the corner of a lesson only appears where the browser can make the lesson fill the screen. iPhones can't, so students on an iPhone don't see it; turning the phone sideways is how they get a bigger lesson.

What happens when a learner opens a lesson

From the learner side, opening an assignment launches the assigned lesson and gives the student a place to submit an attempt.

This is why good scene flow matters so much. Learners should not need your studio knowledge to understand what to do next.

When a lesson isn't available any more

A lesson an educator bought from the marketplace can stop being available, for example when the purchase is refunded or the lesson is taken down. It stays on the learner's list, but instead of opening it says "This lesson isn't available any more. Ask your teacher." Their teacher sees the reason on the lesson's page and, when the publisher has a newer version, can give it to the class in one click (details).

When a lesson won't open

Learners never see a technical error message. What they see depends on why the lesson didn't open:

• A connection or server problem: Berdee first tries again on its own, twice, so a short blip (common when a whole class opens the lesson at once) usually just looks like a slightly longer loading screen. If the lesson still hasn't opened after about 40 seconds, the learner sees "We couldn't load this lesson. Check your internet connection and try again." The Try again button opens it again without leaving the page. Trying again never starts a second attempt: the learner picks up the one already open.
• You removed the assignment while they had it open: "This lesson isn't assigned to you anymore. If you think that's a mistake, tell your teacher." The Back to Home button takes them back to their list.
• Their sign-in ended (the browser closed, or 2 hours without activity): "You've been signed out." The Sign in again button takes them to the page where they enter their access code.

If one part of a scene can't be shown, that part says "This part of the lesson couldn't load. If you get stuck, tell your teacher." Everything else on the scene keeps working, but if the broken part was the button that moves them on, the learner can't continue. If a learner tells you they saw this, let us know which lesson it was.

Why the first scene takes a moment to appear

When a student opens an assignment, a brief spinner appears before the first scene. That pause is deliberate: Berdee is fetching the pictures on that scene so it arrives complete, instead of drawing the text first and popping images in a second or two later.

While the student works through that scene, Berdee quietly fetches the images for the rest of the lesson in the order the student will meet them — so moving from scene to scene stays instant.

Two things follow for you as an author:

• A slow image never traps a student. If a picture is taking too long, the

lesson starts anyway and the image arrives when it arrives.

• Lighter images still open faster. Preparing the pictures doesn't make them

smaller. A 6 MB photo used as a full-scene background is still 6 MB. If a lesson feels slow to open, look at the size of the images on its first scene — see Choose and source media.

What an attempt represents

An attempt is a recorded learner submission for that assigned lesson.

Attempts matter because they preserve:

• When the learner started
• When the learner completed
• Which ending they reached
• The recorded result data

That makes attempts the bridge between interactive authoring and instructional follow-up.

What "completed" means

An attempt is complete the moment the learner reaches the lesson's closing scene — no separate finish step for a learner to remember.

One older path still finishes an attempt too: a Submit button set to Submits = Lesson, pressed anywhere in the lesson, finalizes it on the spot. Every lesson still needs one of these to publish. Retiring it, so that reaching the ending is the only way a lesson finishes, is the next step — until then a learner who presses it mid-lesson sees a plain "Lesson Complete!" card instead of your ending, with a Start over button that begins a new attempt.

Three things follow from that:

• Answers are locked on arrival. What the learner had answered when they reached the ending is what the attempt records. Nothing can change afterward, so a score you look at on Monday is the same score on Friday.
• The ending they reached is part of the record. When a lesson has several endings — Mastered, Needs more practice, Ask an adult — the attempt captures which outcome that learner landed on, not just their score. In a branching lesson that is often the more useful of the two.
• A learner who never reaches an ending has no completed attempt. That is a signal worth reading: they may have run out of time, gotten stuck on a scene, or lost connection right at the end. The lesson's flow is usually where to look — see The Lesson Graph for scenes a learner can enter but never leave.

While the ending saves their work, learners see Saving your work…, then Your work is saved. and a Back to assignments button, with a small Berdee bird beside it that reacts once to their score (a star, a check or a heart; never a sad face). If the save fails they get We couldn't save your work. with Try saving again, which retries the save. If they lost their connection, the save also retries on its own as soon as the device is back online, as long as they're still on the ending. They can still leave without saving — an offline learner should never be trapped on a screen — and that attempt stays incomplete.

Beside those buttons, Not you? with a Sign out button lets a learner on a shared computer sign out when they finish; it waits for the save first. A learner's sign-in also ends on its own when the browser closes or after 2 hours without activity. See Shared computers.

Replaying creates a new attempt

Learners can open a completed lesson again from their assignment list. That starts a fresh attempt rather than reopening the old one: the first attempt keeps everything it recorded, and the second records its own from scratch.

The lesson stays in the learner's Completed list with the grade from their most recent finished attempt. Opening it again, even just to look, never moves it back to To do or hides that grade; a finished replay simply replaces the grade with its own.

Both show in the learner's attempt history, so you can see whether a second run improved on the first — and, in a branching lesson, whether it ended somewhere different.

Leaving before the ending

A learner who closes the tab, loses the connection, or refreshes the page mid-lesson can pick up where they stopped. The next time they open the assignment, they see Welcome back!, with a Berdee bird slipping a bookmark into a book, and two buttons:

• Continue where I left off takes them back to the scene they were on, with the answers they gave. Answers a Submit button already graded come back locked, exactly as before.
• Start over begins a new attempt from the first scene. The unfinished one is marked Abandoned and stays on the record, with its answers so far listed on the attempt page (see below).

They're only asked when there's something to come back to. A learner who left on the first scene without answering anything just continues.

A few things start fresh even when they continue:

• Variables your lesson keeps, such as a running score or a counter, go back to their starting values, and widgets a behavior showed or hid go back to how the scene begins. Any answer a condition reads is restored, so conditions on answers work as before.
• The last few seconds before the tab closed may not show on screen. Those answers aren't lost: Berdee keeps them on the learner's device and sends them on when the lesson opens again.
• A very large drawing may come back blank. The learner can draw it again.

If you pushed a new version of the lesson since they started, there's no choice: they start the new version from the beginning, and the unfinished attempt on the old version is marked Abandoned. A learner never continues on content you've replaced.

Each learner has only one unfinished attempt per lesson. An unfinished attempt the learner never comes back to shows as In progress for the rest of that day and as Abandoned after that. If the learner had the lesson open in another tab and finishes it there, that attempt still counts: it's recorded as complete even if a newer attempt was started.

Switching to another tab or app and coming back is different: the lesson stays where it was, and nothing is lost. Answers a learner gave before switching away are kept on their device until the server confirms it has them, so a patchy school connection at that moment doesn't cost them those answers when they finish.

How educators use attempt data

Attempt history helps you answer questions like:

• Did the learner engage with the lesson
• Did they retry it
• What result was recorded
• Which lessons may need clearer instructions or a stronger support path

When you open a single attempt to review it, the result shows a **graded on v{n}** label — the exact version of the lesson the student was scored against. Because a student finishes on the version they started, this tells you which version's content and answer key produced the grade, even if you've since published a newer one. See Push a new version to your students.

The same page also shows:

• Ending reached — which of the lesson's endings the student landed on, when the lesson has more than one.
• Per-scorable breakdown — every graded question with the student's answer, whether it was right, its points, how many tries it took, and time on the question.
• Answers so far — for an attempt that isn't finished, the questions the student had answered when they left, with those answers. Points here are provisional and not in any grade, and a question marked Can still change is one the student could still edit if they came back to that attempt.
• Event timeline — when the student started, entered and left each scene, submitted, switched tabs, or finished.

What the student answered

The Answer column shows each answer in words, the way the student saw the question. You see the option they picked, not a code for it. If you've renamed an option since, the answer still shows the name the student saw, because it's read from the version they took.

For example, for a lesson about animals and their young you might see:

How each kind of question reads:

• Multiple choice, dropdown — the option they chose (or every option, for a multi-select). A picture option with no text shows its file name.
• Checkbox — Checked or Not checked.
• Text input, long answer — exactly what they typed, in quotes. A long one is shortened; select Show full answer to read it all.
• Number input — the number they entered or the slider position.
• Fill in the blank — your sentence with their words in the blanks, underlined and in bold. A blank they left empty shows as a line.
• Matching — each item and what they matched it with, or not matched.
• Sorting list — the items in the order they put them.
• Drop bucket — for each bucket, the items they dropped in it.
• Text highlight — the words they highlighted.
• Word search, rain game, conveyor belt — the words they found or the items they caught or picked.
• Button, spin wheel, hotspot — what they did: how many times they pressed or spun, where the wheel landed, or whether they tapped.

When a question reads its choices aloud, a line under the answer says how many of them the student heard first: "Heard 3 of 4 choices before answering" or "Heard every choice before answering". A child who heard every choice and still chose wrong may need help with the math; one who heard none may be guessing at words they can't read. Hearing is never part of the grade.

No answer means they skipped the question or left it empty. The Result column says Correct or Incorrect for questions Berdee grades, and Not graded for a long answer, which nothing grades yet. Drawings aren't shown here yet; the column reads Not shown yet for them.

Only the teacher who assigned the lesson can open this page.

Design choices that improve the learner experience

When building for assigned use, prioritize:

• Obvious opening scenes
• Clear button labels
• One main task per scene
• Visible feedback after submission
• Simple retry flows

The student view is where complexity shows itself fast. If a lesson feels confusing here, the studio setup probably needs simplification.

Strong real-world examples

• A short phonics lesson with a clean start scene, one check-for-understanding scene, and a clear completion message.
• A review game with a visible score so the learner always knows how they are doing.
• A practice lesson with a retry scene and hint reveal so the learner can recover without teacher intervention.

Recommended next reads

• Classrooms and Assignment Workflows
• The Closing Scene — the scene that completes an attempt
• Grading and Score
• Build Your First Lesson
• Reusable Lesson Patterns