Glossary

A – C

Accepted answers

Alternative correct spellings or phrasings that are marked right on recall cards. For example, “fibre” and “fiber” are both accepted on Food GCSE nutrition cards, as are common abbreviations such as “carbs” for carbohydrates. The accepted list is authored alongside each card so students are never penalised for correct regional spelling or reasonable shorthand.

Adaptive picker

The algorithm that decides which card to show next during a session. It uses a five-bucket priority ordering: (1) skipped and overdue, (2) wrong and overdue, (3) unseen, (4) due and previously correct, (5) not yet due. Unseen cards are deliberately placed above already-answered correct cards so new material reaches students promptly rather than being buried behind revision of familiar content. Within each bucket, selection is random. The picker operates purely on each card's review status. It does not filter by card type or adjust which formats are shown based on a student's proficiency. Type variety in a session reflects the composition of the card bank itself. See Spaced repetition for the full algorithm.

Avatar

The character image representing a student on leaderboards and their profile page. Each subject has its own avatar set: chefs for Food, scholars for History, climbers for Geography, and so on. Students unlock additional avatar variants by earning XP. See Profile & cosmetics for unlock thresholds.

Board (exam board)

The organisation that sets and marks the GCSE exam for a given subject. Educator covers GCSE and KS3 only, and supports AQA, Edexcel, OCR, Eduqas, and CCEA across its subjects. Each card carries a boards array listing which boards include that topic, so students can filter their sessions to their own board. A school student's board is set by their teacher on the class. An individual learner starts on Eduqas in every GCSE subject that offers it (Psychology has no Eduqas board, so it starts unfiltered, across all its boards) and sets their own board per subject in the My subjects panel on their profile, where “All boards” removes the filter; a change takes effect from the next session. KS3 cards have an empty boards array because no exam board applies at Key Stage 3.

Beta (subject status)

A subject tile marked Beta has a complete card bank and is fully functional for students: it works identically to a Live subject from a practice perspective. The card bank may still be updated based on classroom feedback. Music is currently in Beta. Every other subject that has a card bank is Live, and three further subjects (Statistics, Economics, and Hospitality & Catering) are Coming soon. Compare Live (stable content, promotion gate cleared) and Coming soon (a preview landing page only, with no cards written yet).

Boss battle

A variant of event that filters the card pool to higher-tier cards and pays bonus XP on top of the usual 10 per correct card. Boss battle and collective are independent flags: a boss battle can be solo or collective, and collective is available on class events only (the whole class contributes toward one shared target and everyone earns the medal when it is reached). Boss battles appear as a progress banner on the student dashboard, not on the practice screen. See Event below.

Coming soon (subject status)

A subject tile marked Coming soon has a landing page live as a preview, and card authoring has not started. There is no card bank behind it yet, so the subject cannot be licensed, taught or practised. The tile exists so teachers can tell us a subject is wanted before we build it. The pipeline is Coming soon → Beta → Live.

Calculation card

A card type whose answer is a number with a unit, for example 25%, £4,000 or 5,000 units. The prompt gives the figures and a one-sentence ask; the card back shows the formula and the worked steps. Marking strips currency symbols, percent signs, units and thousands separators before comparing, each card can set a tolerance so sensible rounding still passes, and on a percentage card 0.25 and 25% are the same answer. Used where the exam assesses numerical fluency, chiefly Business Studies and Combined Science. See Practice.

Card

The atomic unit of content in Educator: a single question-and-answer pair. Every card belongs to a subject, module, topic, and subtopic, and carries a type (recall, MCQ, match-pairs, etc.), a tier (Foundation, Higher, or Both), and a boards array. Cards are authored by the Educator content team against published exam-board specifications and do not change between sessions. See Practice for all card types in detail.

Card report

A flag raised by a student or teacher when a card appears incorrect, ambiguous, or typographic. The affordance is a “Something wrong with this card?” link, shown once the answer has been revealed. Reports are queued for review by the Educator content team, who are the only people who can read the queue; raising a report does not skip or remove the card from the current session. Teachers and Heads of Department do not have a card-report view, so if you want a teacher to know about a card, tell them directly as well.

Card skin

A cosmetic that changes the visual theme of a student's trading card: the design frame, colour palette, and background shown behind the card content during practice. Card skins are unlocked by reaching XP thresholds and are applied per subject. They have no effect on scoring or card difficulty.

Class code

A short alphanumeric code that teachers share with students so they can join a class in the app. When a student enters a class code during onboarding or at educator-labs.com/join, they are added to that teacher's class roster, their progress becomes visible to the teacher, and any homework assignments set for the class appear on their dashboard. Someone who opens the class link or QR code before they have an account first sees the class and school name, so they can check it before signing up. An individual account that joins a class later, after confirming on the join page, becomes a school student account in that class: it moves from the Global and League leaderboards to the class and school leaderboards, the free-tier daily limit stops applying, and its XP and streaks carry over. An individual with an active Pro subscription has to cancel it first. Class codes are generated automatically when a teacher creates a class.

Cloze card

A fill-in-the-blank card where one key word or phrase has been removed from a sentence. The student types the missing word. Cloze cards are particularly effective for definitions, processes, and formula structures where the surrounding context carries most of the meaning, for example naming the missing variable in a formula or completing a scientific process step.

D – F

Daily goal

The card target a student is aiming at each day, shown on the dashboard and the mode picker. The default is 15 cards. Completing any regular session advances the streak: Standard, Speed Round, Marathon, Mark it, Drill weak cards, Topic drills, and Study mode all count; teacher-hosted live sessions do not. Teachers set the goal for their class in class settings. There is currently no self-serve control for a student or an individual learner to change it.

Department tier (pricing)

The entry-level school subscription: one GCSE subject plus its matching KS3 bundle at £400 per year +VAT. Additional subjects are £350/yr each; the Whole-school tier covers everything at £2,000/yr. All prices +VAT. All subject tiers include a four-week free pilot with no card required. See School accounts for the full pricing table.

Distractor

A plausibly wrong answer option on an MCQ or match-pairs card. Distractors are authored to be the answer a student who half-knows the topic might write, never silly red herrings that give away the correct answer by elimination. In History, distractors on MCQ cards are typically well-formed explanatory sentences, mirroring the standard of the exam. Three distractors appear alongside one correct answer on each MCQ card.

Drill weak cards

A practice mode that draws only from the cards you last answered incorrectly, most recently reviewed first. It is an ordinary fixed-length session, not a repeat-until-correct loop: a card you get wrong again simply comes round in a later drill. Unseen cards never appear, because a card you have not met yet cannot be one you got wrong. Drill weak cards is the fastest way to close specific knowledge gaps without waiting for the spaced-repetition schedule to resurface them naturally.

Evaluate card

The card type behind Mark it: a complete model answer to an extended-response question is shown alongside the mark-scheme band descriptors, and you choose the band the answer deserves. Evaluate is Beta, and it is the one card type the app treats differently from the rest. It is drawn only in Mark it mode: every other mode leaves evaluate cards out. It is also hidden from every place cards are listed by topic - the class topic filter, the subtopic tree, the homework picker, the scope inspector, and the Revise hub subtopic lists - so an evaluate-only subtopic never shows up as something to tick. For the same reason Mark it scopes a class by topic rather than by subtopic. Only available where evaluate cards have been authored. See Practice.

Event

A dated challenge that can layer an XP bonus on top of regular practice sessions. A teacher creates events for their own class, a Head of Department for the whole school, and an admin for individual learners. During an active event, every correct card earns the base 10 XP plus the event's bonus amount (if any). Events are shown as a banner on the student dashboard with the days left to run. Boss battles are a specific variant of event with a harder card pool and bonus XP; a class event can additionally be marked collective, which pools progress toward one class-wide target. Live sessions are not included in event XP bonuses.

Foundation tier

The lower of the two GCSE exam tiers, covering grades 1–5. Cards tagged Foundation appear in sessions for Foundation-tier students and for students on the Both setting. For school classes, the teacher sets the tier in class settings. Foundation-tier filtering ensures students are not shown Higher-only content before they need it.

Free tier

The no-cost individual account level. After a 7-day full-access trial, free-tier students can complete up to five sessions per day across all subjects. Free-tier accounts (after the trial) can no longer earn streak freezes. Everything else is the same: every card, every subject, every practice mode, both leaderboards, and every cosmetic, which are unlocked by XP rather than by plan. School accounts are not subject to the free-tier session cap; it applies to individual accounts only.

H – K

Higher tier

The upper GCSE exam tier, covering grades 4–9. Cards tagged Higher appear in sessions for Higher-tier students and for students on the Both setting, never for Foundation-tier students. Cards tagged Both appear for all students regardless of tier. Higher cards typically require understanding of causation, significance, or evaluation rather than straightforward recall.

Homework

An assignment set by a teacher with a deadline, targeting one or more topics or, for tighter revision, the exact subtopics within them. Homework assignments appear on the student's dashboard as a card with the topic, subject, and due date. Homework carries its own scope, so it can target material outside the class topic filter. Each assignment is one fixed batch of questions, the same for every student: the teacher picks how many, and can untick any question to drop it for everyone (match-pairs cards are left out). Students do it in the app using the normal card interface, and the teacher can also print a worksheet of the same questions, with the answer key on a separate last sheet, for anyone working on paper. The first time a student completes a homework assignment, they earn +1 streak freeze as a reward. Teachers track completion from the class page.

Key terms page

A free public glossary at /revise/<subject>/key-terms listing a subject's key terms and definitions grouped by topic, up to 30 entries per topic, with a link from each topic heading into that topic's revision page. No account is needed to read it. Available for most subjects: Business Studies, Computer Science, Design & Technology, Drama, Food, Geography, History, PE Theory, Psychology, Religious Studies, Science, and Sociology, at GCSE and KS3. See Revise hub.

KS3

Key Stage 3: Years 7 to 9, ages 11 to 14. Educator's KS3 banks are not tied to any exam board specification. Where a subject has a KS3 national curriculum programme of study they follow it; where it does not (for example Religious Education, which schools teach to a locally agreed syllabus), they follow the relevant national framework or typical KS3 coverage for the subject. KS3 cards have an empty boards array. Every GCSE subject subscription includes the matching KS3 bundle at no extra cost. For example, a Food GCSE licence also unlocks Food KS3.

L – M

League

The competitive ranking system for individual accounts. There are 25 tiers, from Iron IV at the bottom to Champion at the top, determined entirely by lifetime XP. Promotion is immediate when a threshold is crossed: there is no waiting until the end of the month. Individual accounts can see their league standing on the leaderboard. School students are not part of the league system; they use class and school leaderboards only.

Live (subject status)

A subject tile marked Live has cleared the full promotion gate, so the content is considered stable and production-quality. The gate is an automated check of spec coverage, the card linter, the pedagogical smell test, source citation (every card resolving to an authoritative key fact), fact-check verdicts, and the per-subject anomaly hunt. Additions and corrections still happen, but the core card bank is settled. Compare Beta (accessible and complete, still awaiting a specialist teacher's sign-off) and Coming soon (a preview landing page only, with no cards written yet).

Live session

A teacher-hosted real-time class quiz. The teacher starts a live session from their class page (at /teach/[classId]/live), selects one or more topics or chooses Mixed, and students join from their dashboard. As students answer cards, the teacher sees a live leaderboard updating in real time. Live sessions are designed for in-class use: the competitive leaderboard is visible to the teacher, not pushed to students' devices as a social signal.

Marathon

A practice mode consisting of 50 cards in a single session, using the same adaptive card picker as a standard session. Earns the same 10 XP per correct card. Designed for pre-exam revision blocks when a student has 20–30 minutes and wants maximum coverage.

Mark it

A practice mode where students read a model answer and decide how many marks it would earn under the mark scheme, playing examiner rather than student. Mark it is available only for subjects whose card corpus includes extended-response cards. It is most effective once a student already knows the facts and wants to internalise the marking criteria.

Match-pairs card

A card type showing several terms on the left and their definitions on the right, shuffled. You tap a term, then its matching definition, until every pair is connected; all pairs must be right to earn the card. Used for vocabulary sets where learning the terms in isolation would be artificial. Two modes leave match-pairs out: Speed Round, because tap-to-pair does not fit an 8-second countdown, and Study mode, because there is nothing to pair when the answer is already on screen. See Practice.

Mastery level

One of five stages a card progresses through as a student answers it correctly over time: Unseen (never shown), Seen (shown at least once, but not yet correct twice - a single right answer leaves it here), Familiar (answered correctly at least twice, most recently right), Proficient (answered correctly across multiple spaced intervals), and Mastered (consistently correct over a long interval). Answering incorrectly drops the card straight back to Seen. Mastery levels drive the spaced-repetition schedule: higher levels result in longer gaps before the card reappears.

MCQ (multiple-choice question)

A card type presenting one correct answer and three distractors. Distractors are written to be plausible rather than obviously wrong. In History, both the correct answer and the distractors are often full explanatory sentences, because the subject rewards contextual reasoning in exams. Students tap or click their chosen option; the card back explains why the correct answer is right.

Module

A grouping of cards within a subject, used primarily in History GCSE, where the curriculum is divided into named paper topics such as “Weimar & Nazi Germany” or “Medicine through time”. A module sits above topic in the hierarchy: subject → module → topic → subtopic → card. Most other subjects use topic as the top-level grouping without a module layer.

My subjects

A panel on an individual learner's profile (/me) that decides which subjects appear in the header subject switcher. Toggle a Key Stage, tick the subjects you actually study, and the switcher lists only those plus the subject you are currently in, with a “Manage subjects” link back to the panel. Without it the switcher would list every live subject key. Each ticked GCSE subject also carries an Exam board select in the same panel, so an individual learner can sit AQA History and OCR Geography at once, or pick “All boards” to remove the filter; it saves immediately and applies from the next session. School students do not use the panel: their switcher is built from their class memberships and their board comes from the class.

P – R

Pilot

A four-week free trial for school accounts. During the pilot, the school has access to the full app: all teacher tools, unlimited students and classes, homework, live sessions, and all cards for the licensed subject. No payment card is required to start. After the pilot, if the school does not convert to a paid subscription, the account is frozen straight away (student access off, teacher access read-only) and the data is deleted within 60 days. The school is contacted before the deletion is carried out, and can ask for it sooner.

Pro (subscription)

The paid individual account tier, available at £50 per year or £6 per month. Pro subscribers get unlimited sessions per day (the free tier caps at five after the trial), ongoing streak-freeze earning (capped at 5 held), position framing on the global leaderboard (the +XP gap to the rank above), and early access to new subjects. Pro does not affect access to card content or cosmetics: every card is free on both tiers, and cosmetics are unlocked by XP, never by plan.

Rank

A title earned by accumulating XP across your account. There are six rank levels, and each subject shows them with its own subject-specific names. For example, Food GCSE progresses from Apprentice through Junior Cook, Cook, Sous Chef, and Head Chef to Master Chef. Rank thresholds are 0, 500, 1,500, 4,000, 10,000, and 25,000 XP. The rank itself is shared across subjects: a Master Chef in Food is shown as a Master Historian when they switch to History, because both labels sit on the same account-wide XP total.

Recall card

The most common card type: a short-answer question where the student types or says the answer from memory. Answers are checked against the correct answer and the accepted answers list. The recall format is used wherever the exam tests bare factual retrieval: names, dates, definitions, quantities. Answers are typically four words or fewer; longer answers use MCQ or cloze instead.

Revise hub

The free public revision section at /revise. No account and no sign-in. Each subject has a page listing its topics with question and subtopic counts, and each topic page shows the subtopics covered, that topic's key facts, and a sample of the questions with the answers marked. Practising the full set with spaced repetition needs an account. See also Key terms page.

Scaffold card

Also called Fill the gap: a model paragraph or explanation with one key term replaced by a choice of options, and you pick the term that completes the passage. Scaffold cards suit extended-response topics, where reading a well-structured answer and spotting the missing component builds both vocabulary and argument structure. They appear in standard sessions for any subject that has them. See Practice.

Science route

The scoping axis for GCSE Science: Combined (the default), a single separate science (Biology, Chemistry, or Physics), or Triple. A route is not a separate subject. It filters the shared Science card bank by discipline and by whether content is Triple-only, and it combines with the exam-board filter, so a class can be AQA Triple or Edexcel Combined. Teachers pick it when creating a class and can change it in class settings; individual learners pick it at onboarding and can change it on their profile. KS3 Science has no route.

SM-2

The spaced-repetition algorithm that Educator's scheduling is based on. SM-2 (SuperMemo 2) assigns each card an ease factor and an interval. After a correct answer, the interval is multiplied by the ease factor to determine when the card reappears. After an incorrect answer, the interval resets. Educator's implementation also weights response speed: a fast correct answer earns a longer interval than a slow one, reflecting stronger memory encoding. See Spaced repetition for the full specification.

Spaced repetition

The evidence-based revision technique of reviewing material at increasing intervals over time, timed to just before you would forget it. Rather than cramming everything on one evening, spaced repetition distributes study across days and weeks, building long-term retention far more efficiently. Educator's entire card scheduling system is built on spaced repetition. See Spaced repetition for the research background and practical implications.

Speed Round

A practice mode with 15 cards and an 8-second countdown per card. If the timer runs out, the card is marked wrong. Speed Round builds the fluency and pressure tolerance needed in an exam room, where factual recall must be near-instant. It reveals which knowledge is truly automatic and which is still effortful under time pressure.

Standard session

The default practice mode. A standard session runs for the student's daily goal card count (default: 15). Cards are selected by the adaptive picker: skipped and wrong cards first, then unseen material, then cards due for review. Standard, Speed Round, Marathon, Mark it, Drill weak cards, Topic drills, and Study mode all count toward the streak; teacher-hosted live sessions do not.

Streak

The number of consecutive days a student has completed a regular practice session. Standard, Speed Round, Marathon, Mark it, Drill weak cards, Topic drills, and Study mode all count; teacher-hosted live sessions do not. Missing a day resets the streak unless a streak freeze is consumed automatically, and a broken streak of 3 days or more can still be won back (see Streak earn-back). The dashboard displays the streak count prominently as a primary engagement signal.

Streak earn-back

When a streak of 3 or more days resets (more days were missed than your freezes could cover), a 48-hour earn-back window opens. If 2 sessions are completed within that window, the streak is restored. The dashboard shows a banner tracking progress during the earn-back window.

Streak freeze

A consumable item that automatically protects a streak when a day is missed. One freeze is spent per missed day; if you hold enough to cover every missed day the streak remains intact. If the gap is longer than your reserve, the streak resets and you keep your freezes. Students can hold up to 5 freezes. School students, Pro individuals, and trial individuals earn them via first homework completion (+1) and every 7-day streak milestone; free individuals after the trial can no longer earn freezes. There is no unlimited supply: the cap is 5 on every account.

Study mode

A practice mode that is a read-through rather than a quiz: prompt, answer, and source citation are shown together and you tap Next. A session is 30 cards, drawn unseen-first for breadth; match-pairs cards are left out because they need an answer. It earns 1 XP per card seen rather than 10, moves cards from Unseen to Seen without disturbing the spaced-repetition schedule, and counts the day toward your streak (its done screen skips the streak celebration, so it can look as though it does not).

Subject key

The internal identifier for a subject used throughout the app and database. For example, food, history, geography_ks3, science, science_ks3. KS3 variants append _ks3. Subject keys are used in URLs, database rows, and leaderboard queries to scope data correctly per subject.

Subtopic filter

A class setting one grain finer than the topic filter. In class settings the topic tree expands so a teacher can tick the exact subtopics the class is covering this half-term. Once any subtopic is ticked, the subtopic filter takes precedence over the topic filter and standard sessions draw only from those subtopics. Homework carries its own scope, so a teacher can still set revision on material outside the current filter.

T – Y

Tier (card)

Which GCSE exam tier a card is written for: Foundation, Higher, or Both. Students on the Foundation tier see Foundation and Both cards. Students on Higher see Higher and Both cards. Students on the Both setting see every card. Every student starts on Both. For school students the teacher chooses the tier in class settings; individual learners stay on Both. KS3 cards are not tiered and always use Both.

Topic

A subdivision of a subject used to organise cards and filter practice sessions. Topics map broadly to the sections of a GCSE specification, for example “Proteins” or “Food safety” in Food GCSE, or “Cold War” in History GCSE. Students can choose a topic in Topic drill mode to practise one area specifically, and teachers can set homework targeting one or more topics, or the exact subtopics within them. Topics sit below the module level (in subjects that use modules) and above the subtopic level in the card hierarchy.

Topic drill

A practice mode scoped to a single topic, using the same adaptive card ordering as a standard session. Accessible from the mode picker by selecting a topic from the subject's topic list. Useful when a class has just covered a specific area and wants targeted reinforcement, or when a student's progress dashboard shows one topic noticeably behind the others.

Trading card

The collectible visual card representing a student's progress in a subject, displayed on their profile and on leaderboards. A trading card shows the student's avatar, rank, equipped medal, and subject. XP and streak are deliberately left off it, so the card never invites comparison. Card skins change the visual theme of the trading card frame. The trading-card metaphor is a core part of Educator's identity system, connecting gamified progress to something tangible and collectible.

Trial

The 7-day full-access period for new individual accounts. During the trial, there is no session cap and all Pro features (streak-freeze earning, leaderboard position framing) are available. After the trial ends, the account moves to the free tier (5 sessions/day cap) unless the student upgrades to Pro. The trial is automatic on sign-up, with no credit card required.

True / False card

A card type showing a factual statement that is either true or false. The student taps True or False, and the card back explains why the statement is correct or incorrect. True/False cards are particularly effective for common misconceptions and easily confused facts: the binary format forces a clear commitment rather than allowing hedging.

Whole-school tier (pricing)

The largest school subscription: all Educator subjects (GCSE and KS3) for £2,000 per year +VAT. Includes every teacher tool, unlimited students and classes across all subjects, and the four-week free pilot. All prices +VAT. Schools wanting MAT-wide pricing should contact hello@educator-labs.com.

XP (experience points)

The primary progress currency in Educator. Every correct card earns 10 XP; incorrect answers earn nothing. XP is tracked separately per subject, so a student's Food XP and History XP are independent counters. XP drives rank progression (thresholds: 0 / 500 / 1,500 / 4,000 / 10,000 / 25,000), cosmetic unlocks, and (for individual accounts) league standing. An average student earns roughly 2,000 XP per week; a student doing an hour a day earns roughly 16,000. During boss-battle events, each correct card earns 10 + the event's bonus XP.

Related pages

• Practice: card types, practice modes, and how the adaptive picker works in full detail
• Profile & cosmetics: ranks, avatars, card skins, and XP unlock thresholds
• Spaced repetition: the research behind SM-2, mastery levels, and interval scheduling
• Subjects: all subjects, levels, and exam boards covered by Educator