Configuring Your Teaching Preferences¶
Beyond your public-facing profile, there's a whole set of teaching preferences that tune how EchoVQ works for you. These settings don't affect what students see — they affect how the platform supports your teaching style.
Accessing Teaching Preferences¶
Go to Settings → General Settings (or "Teaching Settings" depending on your interface). You'll see several options that let you fine-tune the platform's behavior.
Teaching Methodology¶
This tells EchoVQ your overall approach to teaching, which can influence exercise recommendations and how insights are presented.
Options: - Traditional: You follow classical vocal pedagogy and technique-first principles - Holistic: You consider the whole person — mind, body, voice, emotion - Technique-Focused: Precision and mechanics are your priority - Performance-Oriented: You're preparing students for real-world performance situations
Why it matters: Different methodologies value different aspects of vocal development. By selecting your approach, EchoVQ can prioritize insights and recommendations that align with your philosophy.
What if I blend approaches? Most teachers do! Pick the one that's most true for you, or the one you want EchoVQ to support most. You can change it anytime.
Teaching Style¶
This is about how you communicate with students, which can affect tone and presentation of feedback.
Options: - Supportive: You emphasize encouragement, positivity, and confidence-building - Direct: You give straightforward, no-nonsense feedback - Analytical: You break things down into details and love explaining the "why" - Conversational: You teach through dialogue, questions, and exploration
Why it matters: Your teaching style affects how you want data presented. Supportive teachers might want to emphasize progress and wins; analytical teachers might want deeper metric breakdowns. EchoVQ uses this to subtly adjust dashboard emphasis.
Teaching tip: This is also useful for self-awareness. If you select "Direct" but students often seem discouraged, it might be worth experimenting with balancing directness with more encouragement.
Student Level Preference¶
What level of student do you most enjoy working with?
Options: - Beginners: You love working with brand-new singers - Intermediate: You prefer students who have some foundation - Advanced: You work with serious, experienced students - All Levels: You're comfortable and enthusiastic across the spectrum
Why it matters: This helps the platform recommend exercises appropriate for your typical student. If you mostly teach beginners, EchoVQ won't overwhelm you with advanced opera arias in the recommendations.
Note: This is your preference, not a restriction. You can still assign any exercise to any student — this just tunes the defaults.
Analysis Depth¶
How much detail do you want in the analytics and insights?
Options: - Basic: Show me the essentials — overall scores, major trends - Moderate: Give me a good balance — key metrics and some detail - Detailed: I want to see individual metric breakdowns and trends - Comprehensive: Show me everything — all metrics, all data points, all charts
Why it matters: Not every teacher wants to dive deep into data. Some want at-a-glance insights; others want to geek out on vibrato irregularity graphs. This setting controls how much EchoVQ shows you by default in Student Insights and reports.
What's the right choice? Start with Moderate or Detailed. You can always dial it up if you want more data, or down if you're feeling overwhelmed. There's no wrong answer — it's about what helps you teach better.
Teaching tip: Even if you choose "Basic," all the data is still collected and available if you ever want to drill deeper on a specific student or metric. This just controls the default dashboard view.
Provide Student Glossary¶
This is a simple toggle: Yes or No.
What it does: When enabled, students see a glossary of vocal terms and concepts alongside their exercises and feedback. This is especially helpful for beginners who might not know what "onset," "vibrato," or "support" mean.
When to enable it: - You teach mostly beginners or hobbyists - You want students to learn terminology independently - You value self-directed learning
When to disable it: - You teach advanced students who already know the terms - You prefer to introduce terminology yourself in lessons - You want to keep the interface simple and uncluttered
Most teachers leave this enabled — it's helpful context that students can ignore if they don't need it.
Custom Vocal Terminology (Advanced)¶
This is a powerful feature for teachers who use specialized or non-standard terminology. EchoVQ has default terms for various vocal concepts (like "head voice," "chest voice," "mixed voice"), but you can create custom terminology that replaces the defaults for your students.
Example use cases: - You use Somatic Voicework™ terminology (e.g., "cricothyroid-dominant production" instead of "head voice") - You prefer functional terms over traditional ones (e.g., "fold closure" instead of "compression") - You teach in a language other than English and want localized terms - You've developed your own teaching vocabulary that works for your students
How to set custom terminology: Settings → Terminology Preferences → Add Custom Term - Enter the standard term (e.g., "head voice") - Enter your preferred term (e.g., "upper register coordination") - Save
Now, whenever EchoVQ would normally show "head voice," your students will see "upper register coordination" instead.
Why this matters: Consistency in terminology helps students learn faster and reduces confusion. If you've been using certain terms for years in your studio, you don't have to switch — EchoVQ adapts to you.
Note: Custom terminology only affects what your students see. It doesn't change how exercises or analysis work — just the labels.
Uploading Teaching Materials (Knowledge Base)¶
Some teachers have handouts, guides, PDFs, or documents they share with students regularly. EchoVQ lets you upload these as Knowledge Base Documents, making them easy to reference or share.
What you can upload: - PDF handouts (e.g., "Breathing Exercises for Singers") - Word documents (guides, song lists, practice logs) - Text files (lyrics, IPA transcriptions)
Supported formats: - .pdf - .docx and .doc - .txt
How to upload: Settings → Knowledge Base → Upload Document - Choose file - Add title and description (so you remember what it is) - Save
How to use uploaded documents: - Reference them in messages to students ("Check out the breathing exercises doc I uploaded") - Keep them for your own organization (quick access to your teaching materials) - Share links with students outside the platform
Teaching tip: This is a great place to store: - Warm-up routines you assign regularly - Repertoire suggestions organized by level - Audition prep checklists - Practice log templates
Having everything in one place means you're not digging through email or cloud drives mid-lesson.