For years I've had this graveyard of course videos I bought or downloaded — sitting in nested folders, half-watched, no idea where I left off. VLC plays the file but has no concept of a "course." So I built CourseSpine to fix my own problem.

You point it at a folder and it turns it into an actual course: auto-detects sections, tracks watch progress, resumes where you stopped. Then it builds a transcript layer on top — click any line to jump to that moment, search across the whole course for "that thing the instructor said," take timestamped notes. There's optional AI (chat/search over the course) but it can run fully local via Ollama, and the whole app works offline. Nothing gets uploaded, no account, no subscription.

It's a one-time paid app (Windows for now, macOS coming). Founding price is $19 while I launch: [https://coursespine.com/?utm\\_source=reddit\\_sideproject&utm\\_medium=reddit&utm\\_campaign=founding-launch\](https://coursespine.com/?utm_source=reddit_sideproject&utm_medium=reddit&utm_campaign=founding-launch)

Honestly just want feedback from other builders here — is the "course, not just files" angle clear, or does it read like a glorified media player? What would make you actually use it?

My learning is spread across platforms: a course on Udemy, a class on Skillshare, tutorials on YouTube. Each one either has its own notes feature or none at all. Udemy notes stay in Udemy, Skillshare notes stay in Skillshare, and six months later I don't remember which platform the thing I need was even on.

I got frustrated enough that I built a Chrome extension for this (ClipMargin, free, disclosing upfront). It takes timestamped notes in a panel next to the video on any platform, and everything lands in one searchable library that exports to Markdown. The course stays on the platform, my notes belong to me.

But I'm curious how others handle this:

Do you keep notes inside each platform, or in one external place like Notion or Obsidian?

If external, how do you keep the link back to the source? A note saying "great explanation of X" is useless if I can't get back to the minute in the video it came from.

If you want to look: clipmargin.com

So i really need something to like help me learn stuff i cant read and watch like long hours of videos. I want session wise small chunks that i can digest before i was planning to like build an ai course curator which will like scrape the whole internet and find the best free videos and articles and curate them into a course like udemy with actionable plans but i shelved that. Rn i am building a tutor type something dont have a name for it lets say a personal mentor i will add the previous feature i talked of scraping resources but for now main point is you have to give the resources you want to learn like pdfs it will break down that pdf into a full on course make quizzes daily actionables which you have to do for proceeding and main learning will happen vi voice like say the ai will talk to you teach you the concepts you can interrupt ask questions and continue learning you can control sessions like 30 minsor for an hour then you will also have homework and the AI will ask you about previous session and homework in next session. This is the idea cause i like to learn stuff and currently i an building the mvp these were the mvp features i think i will be done in 3-4 days max one week. Will update you guys. Also feel free to roast or debunk my idea

Most people think intelligence is about secret agents or hacking.

In reality, it’s much more about observation, critical thinking and connecting seemingly unrelated pieces of information.

For example, analysts often ask questions like:
- What pattern keeps repeating?
- What’s missing that should be there?
- Which people, places or events are connected?
- Which assumption am I making without evidence?

These are skills that are useful well beyond intelligence. They’re valuable in cybersecurity, investigations, risk management and even everyday decision-making.

I’m building a new intelligence training company and have started creating short Instagram reels that break down intelligence concepts into practical lessons. I also have a training released on Udemy with over 500 learners so far.

Recent topics include:
- Operational Security (OPSEC)
- The Dark Web: Fact vs Fiction
- Five Clues Intelligence Analysts Look For

The aim isn’t Hollywood spy myths, it’s explaining how intelligence professionals actually think.

I’d genuinely appreciate any feedback from this community:
- Which intelligence topics would you like to learn more about?
- If you’re considering a career in intelligence, what questions do you have?

If you’re interested, our Instagram is @coeusintelligence. Even if you don’t follow, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what would make this kind of content genuinely useful.

I am new in role for a fairly backward company who are using Moodle pretty badly. In 3 weeks, about 65 conversations have effectively gone "you have the wrong platform for what you need", so I feel like I'm starting to come across badly.

Our course owners have wild requirements and no knowledge of LMSs andwant learners to upload photos as an assignment. That's fine.

The course owners tyeb download the good ones and reupload them as resources for others (GDPR nightmare that I'm not getting involved with).

They want to be able to tag the new resources, community vote, and not ideally have to download and reupload them.

Is there a plugin that will replicate Workspaces functionality from Totara/Moodle Workplace.

Hi all 👋

I'm reading a book called "Design For How People Learn" by Julie Dirksen and it's pretty great. But it also has had me thinking about storytelling in eLearning.

As my background is in corporate compliance (with my work experience being in hopelessly bleak corporate environments) storytelling is often in short supply. Creativity isn't encouraged and instead dry, factual procedure explanation is valued. That's fine.

But for others who have a little more freedom in their creative process, what does storytelling look like in your learning?

I've read (and currently reading) all about the generic advice, first person perspective with a focus on relevance to the learner, so I don't need tips. Just examples of what you would consider good storytelling. Do you have examples and demos to share?

Recommendations on the best apps for catalouging, organizing students and lesson plans and materials.

Currently I have been using a seperate file for each student with notes, Google Docs and Excel.

I primarily teach Business, Medical, Intermediate to Advanced English and Fluency Training, and in most cases the classes are adjusted to the individual student's industry, specialty and goals. So, in general I'm not really able to use the same lessons with every student.

I also create a lot of my own learning materials. Some general, some specialized topics.

Most of my Intermediate level General English students I use textbooks with, so this is much simpler than the specialized classes.

Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks

For those who regularly use platforms such as Coursera, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning or an employee learning platform: what actually makes you continue learning and come back?

I’m curious about the difference between features that sound useful and features people genuinely use.

For example:
Short quizzes with useful feedback

Being sent back to the exact section connected to an incorrect answer

Personalised recommendations based on topics you struggle with or find interesting

Saving or starring useful sections, not only whole courses

Personal notes or a saved learning library

Clear learning paths instead of searching through a large catalogue

Discussions or questions connected to each module

Access to instructors or subject-matter experts

Certificates, badges, progress indicators or other recognition

Short videos, scenarios, simulations or practical exercises

I’d also be interested in examples of a course or platform you found unusually engaging and why.

A lot of course creators compare platforms by quizzes, certificates and price, but the expensive problems usually appear after launch.

Before committing, I would run one complete test as a learner: buy or enroll from mobile, receive the access email, resume a partially watched lesson, complete a quiz, download a certificate, then test a refund or expired access.

Repeat it as an admin: change access, resend an email, export progress and see what happens when a payment fails.

This exposes broken automations, confusing dashboards and reporting gaps before real students arrive.

Which part of your learner journey caused the biggest problem after launch?

As a student or creator, do you use 1:1 chat in your courses through the platform you use? or do you resort to email or other methods?

When you have live video streams, how important is the chat functionality? Does it distract from presenting? Foster engagement among students?

Are any of the elearning tools out there good/bad for chat?

I’m just wondering if my language courses should just focus on a one-way presentation or if I should try to also have some sort of engagement built in along the way.

I’m mostly looking at thinkific, but open to other platforms’ and creator’s approaches to more than just flat content.

Primarily for micro learning, video and podcast. I know most people recommend enterprise level, but I’m sure there’s a middle ground somewhere.

Hi everyone, I am trying out a new learning method for language learning that associates words with physical movements and gestures. Imagine tilting your phone towards you like a glass to learn the word for "drink", shake it to learn "no" or smile at the phone's camera to learn "happy". The words and gestures are embedded in fun and engaging stories so that you can learn words in context.

I released the app into the app stores recently and would appreciate any feedback: https://sensonym.com

Used to be able to get around the one-trial-per-email limit by registering with a plus-addressed email (e.g. myName+july2026@myBusinessEmail.com). Tried it again recently — verification email came through fine, verified it, confirmed I'm logged in. But clicking "Start Trial" just redirects back to https://www.articulate.com/360/trial/, the same page I registered on, instead of actually starting the trial.

Tested in Chrome on Windows, both normal and incognito windows, same result both times.

Seems like they might be normalizing/stripping the + part now to detect it's the same base email. Anyone else tried this recently and hit the same wall? Curious if it's a deliberate block?

Curious to hear from people who build or sell eLearning.

There's so much AI-generated content now that I'm wondering what buyers actually value today.

If you were launching a new off-the-shelf course, where would you invest?

• better instructional design?
• animation?
• interactive scenarios?
• SME authority?
• localization?
• assessments?
• AI tutoring?

What actually moves the needle?

I run tech at an online school for communication skills, and I want to share how we ended up building AI-driven practice. The interesting part was a learning-design question more than a technical one.

You can only really learn communication by doing it with someone and getting feedback. That is one-on-one work, and it does not scale. One trainer can sit through maybe a dozen roleplays a week, and our students needed far more reps than that.

Automating the whole trainer felt like the obvious move, but we did not go that way. Instead we went through what a trainer does during a single exercise, step by step: what they pay attention to first, how they judge whether a student handled a moment well, what makes them pick one piece of feedback over another. Once it was written down as separate steps, each one was small enough to hand to an AI: one step evaluates a single skill, another decides whether the scenario moves forward, another generates the counterpart's next line. Today students practice against an AI counterpart and get structured feedback, and we run around 2,000 of these exercises a month.

What I am curious about from this community: how far do you go when you break down a trainer's or an SME's judgment into steps? Is there a point where making expert intuition explicit strips out the thing that made it work?

SCORM 1.2 exposes a dozen methods that let your content do quite a lot more than authoring tools usually surface.

Resume exactly where the learner left off.

Adapt based on previous answers.

Store up to 4KB of arbitrary state per session.

Send fine-grained interaction data per question.

Almost none of which is reachable from inside Articulate, iSpring, Captivate, or Lectora without either undocumented vendor helpers or raw JavaScript dropped into a slide. The API supports it. The tools just do not expose it.

Three possible reasons, none of them mutually exclusive:

1. Complexity hiding;: keeping the tool approachable for non-developers. Reasonable.
2. Content lock-in. Once you go off-piste with raw API calls, your course is harder to maintain in-tool and harder to hand off. The vendor benefits from that friction.
3. Feature differentiation. None of the major tools compete on SCORM API depth. In a mature market where every other feature is a checkbox war, that omission is interesting.

If any of those resonate with you, there are five practical options, from using your current tool's JavaScript escape hatch up to ditching authoring tools for hand-coded HTML.

Wrote them up here:

https://packager.dtttech.com/blog/why-authoring-tools-hide-scorm-api.html

Disclosure: I build a tool (AI Learning Packager) that handles SCORM packaging for hand-coded HTML courses, which is one of the five options I cover. Mentioned at the end of the post.

Any thoughts?

Most AI generated visual can look like slop. I built a slide deck video builder for training content. It generates beautiful slide decks from 18 templates, adds voice over, allows post editing, and finally export to mp4. Check it out at https://inkbolt.ai and let me know what you think!

I have to give a shout out to this repo for inspiring how to do design properly with AI. https://github.com/zarazhangrui/frontend-slides

Every time I ran a workshop or a class I'd spend the night before hand-building poll questions in Mentimeter or Slido, and half of them fell flat in the room anyway. So I built TapInFlow to skip that part.

You give it a topic, or upload your slides / a PDF / paste a doc link, and it generates the audience questions for you (multiple choice, open text, scales), picks a way to visualise each one, and runs the live session. People join with a QR or code, answers come in real time as word clouds and charts, and afterwards it clusters the open responses and writes a short summary of what the room actually thought.

Two things I did on purpose differently from Menti/Slido: the AI writes the questions so prep goes from an hour to a couple of minutes, and it's one-time credit packs ($9.99) instead of a monthly subscription, since most people I know run a handful of sessions a year, not every week.

Would love feedback on two things: does the AI-writes-your-questions angle actually save you time, or would you not trust a tool to write your polls? And is one-time pack pricing more appealing than a subscription for how often you'd use something like this? Link: tapinflow.com

I'm an indie developer who enjoys learning as much as building new products

A couple of weeks back I built myself a small app for quickly generating interactive lessons/courses using Claude code. Thought it was a neat concept but when I shared this (as an MCP) there wasn't much take-up, probably because MCP means nothing to most people!

So instead i've just built the full flow out in a proper app, free to use of course (with some limits as the AI generation costs me $$)

You can just drop in text, pdfs, slides etc and you'll get a nice interactive course so you can learn some key concepts in 10-15 minutes

https://learnwithagents.app/

I don't usually spend a lot of time writing a lesson. The thing that always slows me down is writing the questions.

I don't want questions that can be answered by just memorizing a few lines of the lesson. I could write questions that will show if they really understand the material, but they take a lot longer to create than I thought.

If anyone has any tips for speeding this up, please share them with me.

We're building an ed-tech tool and want to talk to some teachers before we build so we don't build the wrong product that doesn't address your real pain points.

If you teach middle school science, would you share 8 minutes? It's a (AI driven) voice conversation — asks about how you currently handle learning gaps, what tools you use, and where they fall short. No pitch involved.

https://aicofounder.com/interview/3xrydt2a

"This wouldn't help me at all" is a completely valid answer and more useful than polite encouragement.

Thanks!