# Student quick start guide

This page walks you through the absolute minimum steps to go from invitation email to working in your course.

## 1. Accept your invitation

1. Open the invitation email from your instructor.
2. Click **Review Invitation** — this takes you to Nuvolos.
3. If you don't have an account yet, sign up. For students at a Swiss higher education institution, choose the **SWITCH** login option.
4. Click **Accept invitation**.

{% hint style="info" %}
First-time sign-up may take up to a minute to complete.
{% endhint %}

For more details, see [Join a course](/getting-started/students/join-a-course.md).

## 2. Navigate to your course

1. After signing in, the **Dashboard** shows your organisations and recent applications.
2. Click the name of the course you joined — this opens the course space.
3. Your personal instance is selected automatically. You will see the **Current state** of your instance.

For more details on the Nuvolos interface, see [Navigate in Nuvolos](/features/navigate-in-nuvolos.md).

## 3. Start an application

1. On the left sidebar, click the Screen button (**Applications**).
2. Find the application your instructor set up (e.g. RStudio, JupyterLab, MATLAB) and click the **power button** or the application **name**.
3. Wait 30–60 seconds for the application to load.

You can also start recent applications directly from the dashboard. For the full guide, see [Start an application](/getting-started/students/start-an-application.md).

## 4. Save your progress

Before you finish a work session, take a snapshot so you can always return to this point:

1. From the left sidebar, hover on the **camera icon**.
2. Click **QUICK SNAPSHOT**.

That's it — your files, tables, and application state are preserved. For more options, see [Snapshot your work](/getting-started/students/snapshot-your-work.md).


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# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.nuvolos.com/getting-started/students/a-short-video-guide.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.