A glossary of the terms in your lecture
Every lecture contains a handful of words the lecturer treats as already known, and that you have never heard. Alessandria collects them from the recording and defines each one the way it was used in that room — same field, same course, same meaning. It arrives with the notes, without your asking for it.
Updated on
The problem of the words nobody stops to explain
Lecturers are experts, and experts forget which words are hard. So a term gets used in the second minute as if everyone had met it before, and everything built on it for the next hour rests on a foundation you do not have.
You usually do not stop to look it up, for a good reason: stopping means missing the next thirty seconds, which are also unfamiliar. So you keep going and the gap widens quietly.
It is at its worst in the first semester of a degree with its own vocabulary — medicine, law, engineering — and for anyone following a course in a language that is not their first, where the ordinary words are fine and the technical ones are not.
What the glossary looks like
- One entry per term, in the order they came up in the lecture rather than alphabetically: that way it reads as a path through the hour.
- A definition of two or three lines — long enough to be a definition, short enough to read while the lecture is still fresh.
- Only what was actually said. A word the lecturer never used does not appear, however relevant it might be to the subject.
It sits with the notes for that lecture, inside the course, and it is searchable along with everything else. In June you can look up a term and land back on the lecture where it first appeared.
Definitions from the lecture, not from a dictionary
This is the part that matters. The same word means different things in different fields, and a general definition can be perfectly correct and still useless to you.
Consideration in a contract law lecture is not the everyday English word. Stress in a materials engineering lecture is not the one in a psychology lecture. A dictionary hands you the wrong one roughly half the time, and hands it to you confidently.
The definition comes from the course the word was used in. That is the only reason a glossary built from your own lecture beats one you could have looked up yourself.
Where it is, and how to use it
Right after the lecture, read it first
Before the notes. Five minutes on the glossary and the notes stop being a foreign language — you are reading the argument instead of decoding the vocabulary.
Before the exam, use it as a test
Cover the definitions and go down the list of terms. Anything you cannot define out loud is a topic to go back to, and you found it in two minutes rather than in the exam.
During the semester, search it
A term from week two that comes back in week nine: search for it and you land on the lecture where it was introduced, with the definition given then.
Who it changes the most for
- First-year students in a subject with a vocabulary of its own: the first semester is mostly a language problem wearing a content problem’s clothes.
- Students following lectures in a second language, where the everyday words are easy and the technical ones are precisely the ones that were never taught.
- Anyone coming into a course sideways — a transfer, an elective, an exchange semester — who missed the lectures where the vocabulary was set up.
The words of a lecture, made explicit
…and obviously, for the contract to stand up, you need consideration — I assume that’s clear from last year — otherwise we’re looking at a gratuitous promise, which is a different animal entirely, and in most cases unenforceable. Now, promissory estoppel can come to the rescue in some of these situations, but be careful, because it’s a shield and not a sword, and people get that backwards in the exam every year…
Glossary
Consideration — what each side gives up in exchange for the other’s promise. In this course, the element whose absence makes a promise gratuitous rather than contractual.
Gratuitous promise — a promise made without anything given in return; as presented in the lecture, generally not enforceable as a contract.
Promissory estoppel — a doctrine that can prevent a party from going back on a promise that was relied on. Presented as a defence and not a basis for a claim: a shield, not a sword.
A made-up example: we wrote the lecture below ourselves. No classroom recording and no real lecturer’s material ever appears on this page.
Questions about the glossary
Do I have to ask for the glossary?
No. It arrives with the notes for every lecture you upload, along with the concept map, the timeline, the quiz and the flashcards.
Where do the definitions come from?
From the way the term was used in that lecture. This matters more than it sounds: the same word means different things in different fields, and a general definition can be correct and still useless to you.
What if the lecturer never explained the word?
The definition is built from how the term was used in the surrounding explanation. If the recording genuinely gives nothing to go on, nothing is invented to fill the gap.
Is it alphabetical?
No — it follows the order the terms came up in the lecture, so it reads as a path through the hour. To find one term across a whole course, search instead.
What language is the glossary in?
The language the lecture was given in, which is what you want: the term you will be examined on is the one your lecturer used.
Find out how many words you are taking for granted
Upload one lecture and read the glossary before the notes. It is usually a shorter list than you fear, and a more useful one.
Your first two lectures are free. No credit card needed.