lecture.studio

Publish a course to lecture.studio

Publish… on the course screen sends the exported PDFs to your page on lecture.studio, where students get each week's materials on its lecture date.

Publish… on the course screen sends a course to your page on lecture.studio as PDFs: the PDF exported from every unit's deck, a syllabus PDF, and any other PDF you tick. The decks themselves, their images and themes stay on the Mac. Students join with one link and see each week's materials from that week's lecture date. Instructor guides and solutions never leave the Mac.

Connect once#

Open Settings › Publish in the app and press Connect lecture.studio. The website signs you in with Google (and asks for a username the first time), then hands the app a personal token through a lecturestudio:// link; the pane shows Connected as @username. Nothing to copy.

If the app did not open from the website, the connect page shows the token once; paste it in the same pane. A token can do everything your account can, so revoke it under Settings › Mac app on the website if a Mac is lost.

What goes#

The sheet lists the PDFs before anything is sent:

  • Deck PDFs: an exported weekN-slides.pdf next to each deck, ticked. A unit whose deck has no PDF yet gets one exported during the publish (see below).
  • Other PDFs in a unit folder are ticked; PDFs at the course root are offered unticked, except a syllabus.pdf, which is ticked.
  • Not sent: the Marp Markdown decks, the images in assets/, themes, and other documents (Markdown, Word, Excel, PowerPoint). Export what students should have as a PDF first.
  • Held back, never offered: PDFs named like an instructor guide or a solution, and anything under sources/, archive/, research/ and scripts/. The platform refuses them too.

Select all, Deselect all and Deck PDFs only above the list set the ticks in one go; the last keeps only the PDF exported from each unit's deck.

Each row says new, changed or up to date against what the page already has, so a second publish sends only what moved. Files over 40 MB are skipped.

Missing PDFs. A unit whose deck has no PDF named after it shows that PDF as a greyed row, exported on publish: marp-cli makes it during the publish, into the unit folder, when the box at the bottom of the sheet is ticked (it is, whenever marp-cli was found; see Export). Untick the box and the row says no PDF yet and nothing goes for that unit. A deck edited after its PDF was exported keeps showing as published: the marks follow the PDFs, so export again before publishing.

One week at a time#

The library cards carry a green published chip (with the number of weeks published, for a course) once a course or talk has gone to the connected account. The course screen marks every unit published, changed (a PDF in it differs from the last publish) or not published; the marks come from .studio/published.json in the course folder, which the publish writes. The record remembers the account it went to, so the marks only show while that account is connected: connect another account and the course counts as not published there. Click a mark, or Publish week in the workspace header after saving, to send that unit alone.

The course on the page#

The first publish creates the course at lecture.studio/@username/<folder-name> with the code, title and term from the course settings, the first-lecture date, the number of weeks and the unit topics from the deck footers. Pick its visibility in the sheet:

  • Private: not on your page; students get in with the join link.
  • Listed, invite only: on your page with its title and term; the materials need the join link.
  • Public: anyone with the address can read the materials.

After publishing, the sheet shows the course's visibility (change it there), the join link with Copy and Rotate, and how many students are enrolled. Per-week and per-file visibility, the roster and the "view as student" preview live on the course page; Open the course page takes you there.

View as student on the course page shows the course as an enrolled student sees it that day. It stays on while you move between weeks, the course materials and the slides, until Back to your view in the bar at the top. Only you, the course owner, can switch to it.

When students see a week#

A week opens on its lecture date: the first-lecture date plus seven days per week, with cancelled dates shifting the weeks after them (both set in the course settings or on the website). To move one week alone, change its Lecture date on the course page and press Save: the other weeks keep their dates, so two weeks can share a lecture day when you catch up after a missed one. Clear the date to put the week back on the schedule. On the website you can open a week early or hold one back, and hide or show single files. Students see a blue dot on what changed since their last visit.

Online lectures#

For a week taught online, paste its meeting link (Google Meet, Zoom, Webex, or any other https:// address) into the week's Online lecture link field on the course page and press Save. Enrolled students see a Join lecture button in that week on its lecture date only: not before, not after, and never on a public course page to visitors who have not joined. The button shows even when the week's materials are held back. On other days only you see the link, with the date students get it. Clear the field to remove it. A course without a first-lecture date has no lecture days, so set that date first.

Submissions#

The course page's Submissions tab collects work from the class. Give a submission a title and a deadline and press Create; it starts as a draft only you see.

  • Form: the fields each student fills in: short answer, paragraph, file upload (up to 40 MB, optionally limited to types such as .pdf, .zip), link, number, choice or tick box, each optional or required. Required means by the deadline: students can save part of the form and come back, and their row counts as submitted once every required field is filled. Every field is a column of the sheet.
  • Settings: instructions, instruction files (the brief as a PDF, or Word, Excel, PowerPoint and text files, shown to students under the instructions), the deadline (course time), links for the class (a shared spreadsheet, a OneDrive or Drive folder, any https:// address), and who sees what. Open to the class shows the submission to enrolled students; Sheet: shared with the class lets them see every row, in the columns you mark Classmates see this column, while each still changes only their own. Classmates see an uploaded file's name, never the file.
  • Responses: one row per enrolled student, with what they sent and when, marked submitted, in progress (incomplete after the deadline) or missing. Excel downloads the sheet as an .xlsx file and PDF as landscape A4 pages for printing or the archive; in both, uploaded files link back to the uploads.

Students hand in on the submission's page, save as they go, and can change their row until the end of the deadline's minute; after that the form closes and the page shows what they sent. Downloads are named after the student number and name, so twenty report.pdf files stay apart.

Without the app#

The website takes PDFs (and Word, Excel, PowerPoint or text files) for any week or the course itself, and a talk's PDF. The app sends PDFs only; anything else you want on the page goes up on the website.

Talks#

Publish… on a talk's screen, or Publish talk in the workspace header, sends the talk's PDF the same way: the talk is created at lecture.studio/@username/t/<folder-name> with its title and event, the PDF named after the deck is ticked (and exported first when it is missing), other PDFs in the folder are offered, and the sheet shows the talk's visibility, Private or Public, after publishing. There is no join link: a public talk is open to anyone, a private one is yours alone. The website still takes a PDF for a talk made there.