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Writing lessons

The lesson editor opens from the curriculum. It has a title, a body, and a handful of fields around the edge.

The body​

A rich text editor that writes markdown underneath. It handles:

  • headings, lists, quotes and links
  • tables
  • code blocks with syntax highlighting
  • images, dragged in or pasted
  • mathematics, written as LaTeX

Images you drop in are uploaded to your organisation's own storage and the link is inserted for you. The same image used in five lessons is stored once.

Full screen is worth using for anything longer than a few paragraphs. The editor takes the whole window and the surrounding fields get out of the way.

There is a discard control that reverts the body to the last saved version. It is the fastest way out of an edit that has gone wrong.

Writing for the page rather than for the editor​

Three things reliably look different once published, and all three are worth checking in Student preview:

Tables. Wide tables scroll on a phone. A table with nine columns is a table nobody reads on the device most of your learners use.

Code blocks. Check the language is set, or highlighting is off and long lines wrap badly.

Images. They are shown at the page width. A screenshot of a whole desktop becomes unreadable; crop to the part that matters.

Video​

Video URL puts a player above the written content. Paste the address of the video; it does not need to be uploaded here.

Transcript adds a Transcript tab beside the lesson. Worth adding where you have one: it makes the lesson searchable, readable on a bad connection, and usable by people who cannot watch video right now.

A video is not a substitute for the written lesson. Learners skim written material to find one thing; they cannot skim a video.

Resources​

Resources are files and links attached to the lesson — a starter repository, a dataset, a slide deck, a reading.

Each gets a name and a type. The name is what learners see, so "Week 3 starter project" beats "final-v2-actually-final.zip".

Uploaded files go to your organisation's storage. Links can point anywhere, but check that a link works when signed out of whatever you are signed in to. A document shared only with your own account is a document nobody else can open.

Saving​

The editor tracks unsaved changes and will tell you before you navigate away. Save is explicit — nothing is written as you type.

A lesson saved inside an unpublished course is still invisible to learners. Saving is not publishing.

The AI course builder​

The curriculum tab has a course builder panel. Describe what you want a lesson or an assignment to cover and it drafts one.

Two things about it matter more than what it produces.

It never saves. Opening a draft loads it into the editor in the same unsaved state as anything you typed yourself. It reaches the platform only when you press Save. There is no path by which generated content appears in a course without a person putting it there.

The conversation travels with the draft. Open a draft in the editor and the assistant panel there continues the same conversation, so "make the second example simpler" still has context.

Treat what it gives you as a first draft with your name going on it. It does not know your cohort, your organisation's house style, or what you covered in the previous topic. Structure and scaffolding is what it is genuinely good for; accuracy is your job.

Deleting​

Deleting a lesson removes it from the curriculum for everyone, including cohorts mid-way through the course. You will be asked to confirm.

If you want it gone from a running cohort but kept, unpublishing the whole course is the wrong tool — it hides everything. Consider moving it to the end and retitling it instead, or wait for the cohort to finish.

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