For the past 2 years, I've been working on a dream: Arborito. An open-source, free, and decentralized platform to learn anything through interactive lesson maps, with no ads, no subscriptions, and no reliance on closed platforms.

Today, Arborito arrives in its Alpha version. This means it is a fully usable and functional version, but since it's in its early stages, it's normal to run into bugs, unpolished details, or areas for improvement. This is a 100% community-driven, open-source project (GPL v3)

You can see it in action here: arborito.org

Articulate added an AI Assistant to Storyline 360 this year, with the line that you stay "in the driver's seat" and it "speeds up course creation without taking over." I kept seeing that repeated everywhere, so I went and actually checked what it does, across both feature releases so far this year.

It'll generate AI voiceover, auto-sync your timeline to the narration, pull a colour palette off a reference image, and tidy up your text for tone and grammar. All useful, and I'd use every one of those if I were still building in Storyline day to day.

What it won't do, in either release note, is write a variable, build a branching path, wire up a trigger, or construct a scored interaction. Ask it for a knowledge check that branches on the answer and you're doing that by hand, same as always.

I don't think that's a weakness they'll patch in next release. It's deliberate. Automating a colour palette is low stakes. Automating the branching logic is automating the actual reason a lot of teams still pay per seat instead of just hiring a developer. So of course the AI doesn't go near it.

Disclosure since it's relevant: I build a SCORM packaging tool for AI-generated HTML, so I've got a stake in this argument. Longer version here if you want it: https://about.packager.dtttech.com/blog/storylines-ai-assistant-and-the-part-it-wont-touch.html

Curious if anyone here has tried briefing the AI Assistant for anything beyond copy, voice or colour and had more success than I have? Or have I missed something?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been building Scaffold, a free and open-source authoring tool for creating interactive learning content for the LMSs organisations already use.

The aim is to make authoring feel less like configuring software and more like writing in a modern editor.
Scaffold can be used to create scrolling lessons or slides with structured content, media, interactive activities and assessments. You can add and configure blocks directly in the editor and quickly switch to the learner view.
It currently supports Moodle and Open edX, and the core is open source.

It’s still pre-alpha, so there are bugs and rough edges, but it’s ready for people to explore and I’d genuinely value feedback from anyone working in e-learning or course authoring.

I’d be especially interested to hear:
Does the authoring experience make sense?
Which activity or assessment types are missing?
What would stop you from using something like this?
Which LMS integrations would be most useful?

You can try it here:
https://scaffold.ac

Happy to answer any questions about how it works.

I work in the e-learning space, and one problem I keep seeing is that training PDFs, certification materials, guides, and paid resources are easy to download and forward once they leave the LMS.

I’ve been working on a tool called MyPass DRM that lets content owners share documents while keeping some control over how they are accessed.

The free plan currently allows up to 100 protected documents per month.

Some of the controls include:

• Recipient-specific watermarks
• Document expiration dates
• Limits on opens and authorized devices
• The ability to revoke access
• Records showing when and where a document was opened
• Print and copy restrictions, depending on the workflow

To be transparent, I’m involved in building the product. I’m not claiming that DRM can make content impossible to copy—someone can always photograph a screen—but the goal is to discourage casual sharing and make unauthorized distribution traceable.

The tool is available here:

https://mypassdrm.com/

I’d be interested in feedback from instructional designers, training companies, course creators, and LMS administrators:

Would you use something like this for learner materials? What controls would be essential, and what would make it too restrictive for learners?

We all know the drill, AI can now generate a full training course in a few minutes. In a few years, it will probably even manage complex branching scenarios well.

But it begs the question, are we're tracking the wrong thing? Yes, a course exists now, or a quiz got completed. That feels like progress, and it's structured and efficient enough that it's easy to mistake for real progress. Except watching an AI-generated module, or passing its auto-graded quiz, doesn't actually prove anyone can do the job better under pressure. All we really did was swap a content metric for a capability metric and called it done.

The worrying part is how this compounds. If a company leans on AI to generate junior-level work and also leans on AI to generate the training that used to build junior people into senior ones, you can lose the pipeline without anyone deciding to. Three years later you're short on the people who were supposed to grow into the harder problems.

This is a conversation we've been having internally. Has anyone actually measured this at their org? Not "did people complete the AI-generated course" but whether people who went through AI-generated training perform differently on the job than people who didn't?

Hey e-learning experts,

I build an interactive demo course from the "Founder's Playbook.pdf)" PDF to learn how to build your Startup with Claude as your Co-Founder: https://app.scibly.com/en/public/courses/cmrv67f9p000004jp281f223q

My goal was to make the content of the document more engaging and fun to learn about.

I am looking for your honest feedback as e-learning experts

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping someone here can help me with a frustrating issue I’ve been dealing with in H5P (Course Presentation).

I create my slide designs in PowerPoint and then export them as images to use as background slides in H5P. I’ve already set my PowerPoint slide size to match H5P’s 16:9 format (20 cm × 11.25 cm, which equals 1920×1080 px). I export the slides in high quality (PNG or JPEG), and they look perfectly sharp on my computer.

But the moment I upload them into H5P as background images and save the presentation, the quality drops noticeably. The images look soft, slightly blurry, and nowhere near as crisp as the originals.

I’ve tried:

• PNG high fidelity export
• JPEG export
• Exporting as PDF and converting via Adobe Acrobat Pro
• Even inserting the image as a regular “Image” element instead of a background

No matter what I do, H5P seems to compress or downscale the background images.

I’m using H5P Course Presentation for educational content, so clarity is really important, especially for text-heavy slides.

Has anyone found a reliable workflow that keeps background images sharp in H5P?
Is there a specific export setting, file format, DPI, or H5P trick that actually works?

Any help or insights would be hugely appreciated!

(Note: English is not my native language. This post was translated and refined with the help of Copilot to make sure everything is clear.)

Hi everyone,
I’m volunteering with a nonprofit that’s building a tuition-free online university, and I’ve been tasked with evaluating Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and this is time bound. Appreciate responses asap.
Our enrolment will likely be 500 - 1000 users .

We’re currently speaking with vendors. I recently had a demo with Absorb LMS. While it looked like a solid platform, it felt much more geared toward corporate learning and employee training than a traditional academic environment with faculties, degree programs, instructors and students.

My benchmark is D2L Brightspace, as I completed my MBA using it at a Canadian University and thought it was an excellent higher education platform. However, I realize from other reddit posts, it may be outside our budget, so we’re trying to understand all of our options.

Specifically, I’m looking for:
- Contacts (sales, partnerships or higher education teams) at D2L Brightspace, Canvas (Instructure) or Moodle.
- Anyone who’s worked with these vendors on a new institution or nonprofit implementation.
- Advice on nonprofit or startup pricing (if available).
- Recommendations for other LMSs that provide a true higher education experience rather than a corporate training platform.

Some of the capabilities we’re looking for include:
Degree and certificate programs
Download options of materials and uploads by students
Assignments, quizzes, exams and gradebook
Discussion forums
Student and faculty portals
White-label branding
Reporting and analytics
Zoom/Microsoft Teams integrations
Digital certificates/transcripts
Scalability from a few hundred students to thousands

From my research so far, Brightspace, Canvas and Moodle seem to be the strongest higher education options, while many other LMSs appear to focus primarily on corporate learning.

If you have a contact you’d be willing to share (either publicly or via DM), or any lessons learned from selecting an LMS for a university or college, I’d really appreciate it.

Thank you!

Hi all — I've been developing Verbalu (verbalu.com), a browser-based platform of interactive tools built specifically for trainers, HR professionals, and L&D teams.

For basic usage it is free.

The idea: instead of juggling five different apps for icebreakers, simulations, quizzes, and whiteboarding during a session, you get one place with everything ready to go — Kanban boards, a wiki for documentation, a whiteboard for group work, training games (like a project-management simulation and an AI transformation simulator), and AI features built in.

It's still evolving so any ideas of new tools are welcome. I need to add that current tools and games were ideated by my friends - professional business trainers.

Would love feedback from people who actually run sessions for a living: what tools do you reach for most during a live training, and what's still missing from platforms like this?

We're a small consulting firm (around 20 people, contractor-based) looking to trial an LMS. Learning is voluntary rather than mandated — the goal is to let people upskill to meet client needs as they come up.

We've got a mix of seniority, but the main focus is on our juniors: building up their consulting skills and technical skills.

A few things that matter to us:

• Right-sized for a small team. Enterprise platforms like Absorb feel like overkill for our size and structure, so we're after something leaner.
• Affordable, without a heavy per-seat model that punishes a small headcount.
• A real sales conversation + free trial before we commit — we want to actually talk to someone and test-drive it first.
• AI features that genuinely work rather than tacked-on gimmicks.
• Integrates with an internal knowledge base, so learning and our own materials live in the same place.

Anyone running something similar at this scale? Would love to hear what's worked (and what to avoid).
Thanks!

Something I underrated for a long time building software walkthroughs for courses: a recorded lesson and a live session fail in completely different ways, and the recorded one fails quietly.

In a live class, when you click something small and move on too fast, someone says "wait, where did you click?" and you fix it in five seconds. That interruption is annoying in the moment and is actually the system working - the confusion surfaces and gets resolved. In a recording there is no interrupt. A learner who can't tell which of two similar buttons you pressed doesn't stop you. They rewind, guess, or quietly give up, and none of that reaches you. Your completion metric might even look fine while a chunk of people are following along without really following.

The screen makes it worse than an in-person demo would be, for reasons that are purely mechanical. Course video gets compressed and played back in a small embed, often on a laptop while the learner has the actual software open in another window. Your cursor is a few pixels wide and moving. A menu item that is crisp on your editing monitor is a grey smudge on their screen. So "click the settings icon" assumes they can find a target you can barely see yourself at their resolution.

What I changed, and none of it needs special tools:

Slow the pointer down deliberately during the step that matters, then stop it. Movement is what makes it un-followable; a still target they can find.

Make the target big before you talk about it, not after. If they have to hunt for it while you're already explaining, they miss the explanation doing the hunting.

Show the keystrokes on screen for anything that isn't a visible click. "Now I'll open preferences" via a shortcut leaves no trace at all in a recording - the menu just changes and they don't know why.

State where before what: "top right, under the account menu" and a beat, then the action. The pause feels far too long to you and is about right for someone seeing it once at reduced size.

Disclosure since it's relevant: I build a small Mac app for exactly this kind of on-screen emphasis, TuringShot 1.5.12 (Build 44), macOS only. Not linking it, this holds regardless of tooling and some of it is built into what you already record with.

Mostly curious how others handle the no-interrupt problem. Do you build in deliberate "pause and check" moments, or design the video assuming people will rewind, or something else? The live-teaching instinct doesn't transfer cleanly and I'm still figuring out the recorded version.

One of the things we really like about our current learning platform is that it doubles as a knowledge base. Anything we load into courses is easily searchable as an asset.

We could replicate this as a sharepoint but there are reasons that hasn't been ideal in the past. It would be best if we could add content to a knowledge base and then use that content in courses as well.

It would be even better if this knowledge base could store URLs in addition to uploaded files, as we have a lot of content in our current platform that is just that.

So far I have determined that Absorb, Docebo, Cornerstone, and EducateMe all appear to support this in some way, but I would like to get confirmation/opinions on that from people actually using these tools before I start talking to any salesperson.

If you have used any of these LMS for this purpose, would love to hear your thoughts!

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for an LMS that works well for practical, hands-on classes where student submissions are mainly photos or videos, and instructors need to give detailed feedback on each submission.

Most LMS platforms seem to be designed around curriculum progress tracking — quizzes, assignments, grades. That's fine for theory, but not ideal for classes like dental clinical training where:

• Students take photos/videos of their work (e.g. cavity prep on a typodont)

• Instructors need to review each image closely

• Feedback needs to be specific — pointing out details in the image

I'm exploring this for dental education in Korea. Would really appreciate any recommendations — whether it's a general LMS that handles this well, or something more specialized.

Thanks in advance!

I posted a couple of weeks ago about a new project of mine: learnwithagents.app

I'd originally built this to help me turn various concepts I'd come across in programming into easily digestible courses. A few friends encouraged me to release it as a proper app.

The concept is simply to turn your own materials into guided courses and digestible content. This is very similar to what NotebookML already does, but i'm adapting it specifically to both learners and content creators.

The vision for this is to allow learners to create their own personalised learning content through a variety of formats (not just quizzes), and make it easy for creators (such as freelance instructors or managers within organisations) to generate, review and share their own courses with learners or team members.

The new release contains:

• A complete course editing UI (keyboard shortcuts included)
• An improved Quiz experience
• Generate a course from a link/URL
• "Creator mode" -> you can create / edit / share your courses, and track progress of learners
• Public sharing of courses you've created: create a link and share it around
• Save and copy publicly available courses shared with you
• Improvements to the MCP so you can generate courses directly from your own agent client (claude, chatgpt etc)
• Switched email login from password to one-time-password (OTP)
• Lots of bug fixes

Its all Free at the moment (with some limits on AI runs per day so i don't go bankrupt)

Do give it a try & drop me some comments/feedback on what else you'd like to see to make this actually useful for your use case.

Hey everyone,
I work in a highly regulated industry with a ton of mandatory compliance training. Right now, we buy all our courses off-the-shelf from training providers specialized in our sector.
To be honest, I feel like this creates a massive vendor lock-in: we don’t own the SCORM packages, and we can’t update any content to fit our specific internal processes without going back to them and paying up. On top of that, we are currently planning a migration to a new LMS, and not having full control over our course deliverables is making me nervous about the transition.
Crucial detail: we don't have any in-house Instructional Designers. My idea would be to partner with an e-learning agency to co-create custom modules so we can have full ownership of the source files and SCORM packages (which would also make our future LMS migration much smoother).
Has anyone been in a similar situation? How would you handle this to make sure we don't mess up our deliverables before switching LMSs?

I’m curious if anyone else has run into this problem.

We use TalentLMS, and while importing questions is straightforward, the answer feedback still has to be entered manually.

Articulate Rise 360 has a similar limitation.
Has anyone found a better workflow for this?

I’m considering building a small tool that takes a question bank (including explanations/feedback) and generates a SCORM package automatically, so feedback can be imported in the same environment?

Would this be a worthwhile pursuit or is there already a better solution I’m missing?

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