Glossary of Terms

Here you can find a glossary of common terms and references used throughout our knowledge base. These items may also link to external or more in-depth product descriptions. It may be helpful to keep this page open in a tab as you consult our knowledge base.

Approval - A diagnostic process in Learning Lab Builder after submitting a lab to ensure proper function within the Propeller environment prior to lab deployment to learners.

Class - A section number or name associated with an instructor and a Term used to partially define a Course. Defined by technical staff.

Course - A combination of Term, Class, and Lab that learners are enrolled in to provide Learning Lab access. Defined by technical staff.

Enrollment - Learner membership and details about the students Institution, Term, Course, Class, Username, and dates for access.

GUI - A Graphical User Interface, commonly pronounced “gooey”, is an interface such as an application, operating system view, or web browser that has icons, buttons, and other visual elements to allow navigation and use.

Lab - A single or group of Nodes that are made available to learners in their courses environment.

Learning Lab - Virtual machines, or lab sets of virtual machines, available to learners via the Learning Lab interface in their Virtual Desktop.

Learning Lab Builder - An interface that allows faculty to create labs for their courses from customized nodes.

Locked - A status in Learning Lab Builder where a lab has been submitted for approval or deployed.

Machine Image - A copy of a pre-configured virtual machine operating system. These can be customized to deploy into your lab.

Node - Virtual machines that are available for lab use in Learning Lab and created in Learning Lab Builder.

NoMachine NX protocol - A virtual machine management application and connection protocol alternative. NoMachine can be used on Windows and Linux.

Open Access Labs - Virtual computers set up in traditional multi-use computer lab scenarios. Learners connect and temporarily access a Virtual Desktop to do their work, and then release the machine to be used by others.

Power - In Learning Lab, after a learner has provisioned their lab, it stays with them until they reset it. The Power button is used to start the machines (think of this as power on) after they have been idle for a while.

Provision - In Learning Lab, provision is the button you select to create a set of Learning Lab nodes.

RDP - Remote Desktop Protocol is a method of connecting to a remote virtual or physical computer running Windows.

Reboot - In Learning Lab, the Reboot button allows you to restart your Learning Lab machines.  This might be done for many reasons including, if you need to for a lab, if the machine(s) are behaving slowly, or a general restart just like you would on a normal computer.

Reset - In Learning Lab, Reset is the button you select if you made a mistake or want to start from scratch. When you "Reset" the environment, any work that you haven't saved to a Cloud Storage device or to your local machine will be destroyed, be sure to transfer any files you need to keep.

SSH - Commonly known as Secure Shell and often utilizing port 22, SSH is a connection protocol to allow remote access to a computer. It is most often used for Linux command line access.

Term - The time period assigned to a Class used to partially define a Course. - Defined by technical staff.

Virtual Applications - Software you would traditionally need to install on a computer run made available to any device through a modern web browser.

Virtual Desktop - Cloud-hosted computers that allow a consistent, secure, environment for learning.