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I propose we get stick about the terms we use in the PBA to define and reason about the various types of content we have here.

We casually use a few terms to refer to the same things ( i.e. lesson/lecture/presentation/...), but sometimes that gets vague and confusing in:

• trying to categorize and allot time dedicated to specific content types that we want to gauge better (passive vs. active)
• easy understanding of requirements to deliver the content (instructor lead vs. student self-directed)

Here is what I want to use, strictly:

• Lesson: a umbrella term for a segment of content presented by one of the Academy instructors or Teaching Assistants. This can include lectures, workshops, and guided exercises.
• Lecture: passive content that is hands-off in nature for the students. This is typically a presentation with an accompanying slide that covers specific topics, modularly (a.k.a a “lecture” although the Academy does not use this term intentionally). This also includes demonstration of code and applications where students are expected only to observe (e.g. live coding by the instructor and/or demonstrations of CLI applications.)
• Workshop: active content that is heavily driven by an instructor. Students will typically be expected to have a laptop ready and configured to participate, with the prerequisites for participation explicitly defined in the content itself (i.e. live-coding of some base rust software - like the substrate template {installed and compiled before class} - where students follow along and write code real-time as presented step-by-step.)
• Exercise: active content primarily self-driven and directed to work independently or in groups in class. Instructions must be self-contained, without an explanation of the task explicitly needed by an instructor for students to perform it (i.e. a rust crate with README describing a task and todo!() blocks identified to complete)
• Assignment: active work that may or may not be associated with a deadline and require submission, and may or may not be graded. They are strictly to be worked on outside of official class time, although may be directly dependent on an exercise or workshop completed in class. Instructions must be self-contained, without an explanation of the task explicitly needed by an instructor for students to perform it (i.e. a rust crate with README describing a task and todo!() blocks identified to complete)

Open for comment here, and if no strong opposition I will go through the repo and get things uniform retroactively, as well as in future work lay out guidelines, templates, and examples of each of these content types for us.

I very much support the effort to have some standard terminology. And I mostly like the way you've defined them. But I really dislike using "lesson" as roughly synonymous with "lecture".

I think lesson is the big umbrella term for which each of the others is a subclass. This is inline with this dictionary entry too.

Consider some common usage. Guitar lesson. Driving lesson. Swim lesson. You definitely wouldn't expect those things to be primarily lecture-ish.

my 2c

Open to suggestions on a good term to replace "lesson". Based on the definition i drafted above... Unclear. I hesitate to use "lecture" as that feels so drab and old skool. But it might be the most fitting term?

Some alternatives:

• lecture
• one-to-many learning
• presentation
• monologue

I'm personally partial to just calling it a 'lecture', as that seems by far the most appropriate for a single instructor speaking to slides, with some occasional student interaction. The category you have covered by 'lesson' could also be broken down into 'lecture' and 'demonstration', where demonstrations involve the instructor doing something more directly involved with the code.

I also agree with Joshy that lesson feels like an umbrella term that some of the others would fall under.