The first person to ever complete a Pathwright course was a retired gentleman in his 70s. He’d never even used a computer before. His granddaughter set him up with a laptop, internet connection, and a barely-working Pathwright account.

The first person to ever complete a Pathwright course was a retired gentleman in his 70s. He’d never even used a computer before. His granddaughter set him up with a laptop, internet connection, and a barely-working Pathwright account that he used to blaze through the course faster than all the other beta testers.

That was in 2011 when Pathwright was just two twins (Mark & me) hacking together in our spare bedroom and spare time. Our first goal was to design a course experience so simple anyone could do it. And this fine gentleman validated that we were on the right track. That felt great.

Back then, we wanted nothing more than to make a simple, beautiful product that teachers and learners alike would love. We spent the next five years bootstrapping Pathwright from a side project into a team of people serving thousands of educators.

But, after launching Pathwright 2 in 2016, I slumped into dissatisfaction with our product. It’s not that it wasn’t working. In fact, people loved the changes we’d made. But I’d begun to fall into the Silicon Valley trap of thinking that somehow our little software app needed to “change the world.”

Now we’ve never fit the mold of a Silicon Valley startup. We turned down venture capital in favor of bootstrapping and have always been profitable because we’ve had to be. We've always run Pathwright more like an ordinary business. That isn’t to say we’re not ambitious, but we're not motivated by truckloads of money or fame. We're more interested in making a dent in the world for good while we can.

Despite this, I’d drifted towards the stereotypical Silicon Valley siren call that our product might just change the entire world. But the reality is that most businesses — and especially software businesses — aren’t going to change the world. And that’s ok. Software is merely a tool, after all.

We’re not hoodie-wearing heroes, we’re the craftspeople and tool makers. Our role in the story is more like Ollivander, Harry Potter’s wand maker, Batman’s assistant, Alfred, and Don Quixote’s horse.

Let’s get over ourselves. Sure, viewing our trade as techsmiths isn’t as glamorous but it is fulfilling and noble.

Once we stopped navel-gazing at our product and put ourselves in our proper place, we had the clarity to formulate our true purpose. Here’s what we came up with:

Our mission is to multiply the impact teachers make on the world.

This simple mission frees us from struggling to play the hero and focuses us only on helping the people who truly make a difference in the world: Teachers.

If you’ve got something to teach, then you’re the hero of our story. And if our Pathwright can cut down your busywork so you have more time to teach and give you tools that help you teach more personally and reach more people, then we’re multiplying the impact you already have. And that’s what changes the world.

If you'd like to design a course, we invite you to try out Pathwright for free.

You can also send questions, comments, or topic suggestions our way on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram or email lydia@pathwright.com. We'd love to hear from you!

The web is in an awkward phase right now. We’re transitioning from an era where a website was simply a collection of linked pages to one where even using the term “page” to describe a particular screen is a giant oversimplification.

Blocks, Not Pages, Are the Future Of the Web

When I first started web development, the job was mostly . . .

FTP that baby up to your server and . . .

Boom; you’ve published to the internet. Let’s just say it’s rarely that simple anymore.

While it’s tempting to bemoan the loss of that simple early web, it’s important to realize that the early web was simple because the use cases were simple. The web was primarily an online index of documents that could link to each other.

The modern web is a mixture of complex interactions, responsive content, and social layers that make a document-centric approach an awkward paradigm that isn’t scaling well to user expectations or needs.

It’s a little known fact that the simple document-based approach to the web was not the desired outcome for the early-innovators who built the foundations for the web we know now.

Pioneers like Ted Nelson, Alan Kay, and Doug Engelbart pushed for ideas that go far beyond what we have today. They presented fantastic visions of a future where computing embraced its true digital and collaborative nature to become something entirely new and more powerful.

What we got instead was a bunch of digital documents in digital folders; it does the job, it’s familiar and comfortable, but we’ve lost a lot by taking that path.

⬅ The web we wanted  /  The web we got ➡

Documents and pages are the wrong construct for the modern web. I would argue the web should be built in blocks (or components if you will), not documents.

Blocks provide a different way of thinking about web content as a self-contained unit. Perhaps it’s helpful to visualize at a lego brick which you can build documents (or apps) with.

In the developer world we would call these “components” whereas content creators might call this "micro-content." For the sake of this article I’m referring to both of these concerns, among others, simply as a block.

I’ll explain what I mean and why this is a better approach for publishers, end users, and developers alike.

An open text document, which is where the web started, has no inherent meaning. Any added meaning has to be layered on through tags, meta information, or formatting. There have been many efforts to enrich textual content with more structured meaning over the years and most of these have fallen flat (the semantic web for example).

The problem is multi-faceted, but I think the root of the issue is that the meaning and structure is layered on after the fact rather than being core part of the creation process.

Blocks flip that idea on its head: you don’t markup content as being a heading, you create that content as a heading. That’s a subtle but profound difference.

Blocks provide a way to take discrete units of both content and function and put them together in different ways without sacrificing the integrity of the system.

Much effort has been spent trying do this with “native” web technology via complex CSS schemes (BEM, SMACKS etc.), XML, web components, etc. While some solutions are more elegant than others, these techniques try to force a modular, block-centric workflow on document-centric medium and the results are awkward and cumbersome at best.

This problems is largely solved with component-centric frameworks like React or Vue that make the components the first class citizen.

That said, these frameworks have to rely on complex tooling to get out of that document-centric paradigm and put components (blocks) at the top where they should have been all along.

Encapsulation is a principle used by programmers to make code more reusable and reliable for decades but it applies equally well to blocks.

Thinking of your content and UI as modular units and then actually developing them that way removes the dissonance of trying to develop block-based content with document-based tech and makes it much easier to ensure quality.

Our team has components we haven’t touched in years that are completely self-contained and Just Work™.

Blocks are structured enough to allow for a richer form of collaboration than a document can. Historically editors have had to “get out the red pen” or highlight, underline, and leave notes in the margin to give feedback on documents.

Imagine how much better it could be if feedback and reference tools were actually aware of the type of content referenced? For instance, leaving feedback on a video block might timestamp to exactly the spot the feedback was for. Checking the source of a quote could be done automatically in quote block.

Content editing tools are far more powerful when the structure and meaning of a piece of content is known from the beginning and not just layered on afterwards.

I could elaborate much more on all of this but this post is getting quite long so I’ll leave you with this:

As awkward as web development can be these days, I think the tides are turning and there is change in the wind. We’re moving toward something much better that can embrace the digital medium's true nature.

Right now we have to circumvent the document-centric nature of web development through tooling and component base frameworks like React (which is wonderful), but I’m optimistic these patterns will become more native to the web platform over time.

Some of the content creation tools of the future are being built right now using a blocks-centric approach so you can already experience the difference for yourself.

Here a few examples I’ve found built around the blocks concept that you can try today:

Notion: a block-based collaborative workspace for practically any type of content. Notion is probably the best example of the power of a block-based approach to collaborative content.

Pathwright Blocks: A block-based editor for interactive learning content. This is my company's first take on a block-based approach to learning-centric content.

Universe: An iOS app for creating web pages from your phone.

Qwilr: A block-based tool for creating sale pages, proposals and contracts.

Wordpress Gutenberg: The new Wordpress editor is betting heavily on a blocks-based approach to content publishing (a little awkwardly at this point IMO).

We’re only at the beginning of this shift. My hope is that we can all work together to build the web we’ve always wanted, one block at a time.

We're excited to officially announce the biggest new feature we've built to date: Blocks. Blocks gives you the power to design effective, engaging learning content like never before.

A New Way to Create Content With Pathwright

Over the past year, we designed Blocks "secretly" with our partner educators. As we iterated, developed, and tested with world-class teachers and instructional designers, Blocks became a completely new way to design creative, beautiful, and interactive learning content. And Blocks aren't just new to Pathwright, they're new to education platforms in general. You won't find an instructional content authoring tool like Blocks built into any other education platform.

Blocks is well-tested and ready for you to use today. We hope you'll enjoy using it as much as we have. If you'd like to know a little more before you explore, read on.

Blocks is designed for active learning (not passive consumption)

As we all know, learning is an active, not passive, process. But most web content builders are designed to create content for passive consumption: blog posts, news articles, videos, audio podcasts, ebooks, etc . . .

You can post all kinds of passive content from this ubiquitous web editor.

These passive content builders are easy to use, familiar, and pervasive. Naturally, education platforms adopted them and tacked on quizzes, projects, or discussions to occasionally interrupt the passive stuff. This approach served us well early on, but we began to question its effectiveness. Perhaps learner engagement drops off in online courses because of the dull, blog post-like format rather than the content itself.  What if this "tacked-on" approach was a "hack" built on top of a passive content model? And what if that model is fundamentally built on a wrong premise about learning?

We began designing Blocks for the learner first with the goal of engaging their brains long enough for them to grasp a concept without putting them in screensaver mode. And so far, it's working. Here are some of the ways you can use Blocks to transform passive consumption into active learning:

Instead of a bulleted list to explain a set of facts, use flashcards that picture concepts and engage a learner's memory when they discover new information (above).

Drop a reflection question below a short video or article to help make it stick and encourage application.

Instead of a video demo, quickly create an image with touch-points your learner can use to explore a scene.

We've worked hard to make each of our 30 starter blocks look great out of the box on any device. Even more complex interactions like annotated images or flashcards provide a natural, app-like experience on smart phones and tablets:

With the lego-like Blocks content designer, you can be more creative than ever as you segment your content, show more than tell, and pace the flow of learning.

Blocks provides the best of both worlds: An instructional design tool & education platform all in one.

Currently, designing pro-level instructional content and making it available within an online course requires two big steps of mashing together:

Content created within an expensive, highly-technical instructional design tool like Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline and exporting it.

Embedding the export into a "player" within an expensive, highly-technical Learning Management System (LMS).

Hacking these two complex systems together carries more than 2x the expensive and technical hassle, while usually resulting in a disappointingly disjointed, limited, and opaque learning and teaching experience.

But now with Blocks, you can have your cake and eat it too:

Anyone can author instructional content right within the easy-to-use Pathwright platform without having to import, embed, or link to content from elsewhere.

All the content you build is fully integrated with Pathwright's built-in teaching tools, so you'll be able to use stats, grade work, share feedback, and have discussions right alongside and within your interactive content.

While there are still more advanced interactions that specialized instructional design tools offer, Blocks has all the basic tools you'll need to design instructionally-sound and unique content—and we're just getting started. We'll add new blocks and enhancements frequently.

(And as an aside, Blocks enables us to create entirely custom learning interactions for you. So if you have an idea for a block you'd like to build with us, let us know.)

Blocks multiplies your content team's productivity

As you think about using Blocks for your learning content, you may feel a little like a few of our partners did as we began to roll  this feature out  internally: "Well, this is cool, but wow—we've got a lot of work to do to upgrade all this content."

We think you'll discover along with them that upgrading to Blocks is a surprisingly quick—and fun!—experience:

With only a few clicks, Blocks creates great-looking content. You can copy+paste blocks (or whole steps with multiple blocks) to re-use templates across your courses.

Now all of the images and files you use across all of your content are stored in the new Media Manager—that means brand-appropriate visuals are only a search and tap away.

Oh, and Blocks includes one of our most requested content features: Autosave. Your content saves automatically as you edit so you won't lose your work.

Additionally, our own Learning Experience (LX) Design Team is available on a project-basis to help you economically and professionally transform any content you have (whether it's on Pathwright already or not) into the new Blocks format.

You can start using Blocks within your Pathwright account  today. If you don't have a Pathwright account, you can create one to try out for free and start using Blocks in minutes.

The moment a lecture turns to asking questions, exploring answers, critiquing, expanding, etc. is usually when the most engaged learning happens.

As social beings, we learn best in communities. The moment a lecture turns to asking questions, exploring answers, critiquing, expanding, etc. is usually when the most engaged learning happens. In fact, the best teachers use discussion to teach far more than they lecture.

I think education technology’s role now is to enable this type of rich discussion to happen anywhere and to make it frictionless. (This mirrors what the best tech does; it acts as a superpower or painkiller.)

Unfortunately most LMSs add friction to online discussion. Here’s the typical pattern in an LMS:

Student reviews the content of the assignment (a question, lecture, reading, etc.).

She clicks a link that takes them away from the content to a separate forum or discussion board.

Finally, she discusses what they just reviewed in that separate, new place.

Now how would that look in real life? Something like this . . .

“So do you think spreading the jelly to the edge really saved her life?”

“Stop! If you want to discuss this question, you’ll need to go into the discussion room across the hall.”

Everyone shuffles into the discussion room across the hall…

That’s absurd, right? It would completely break the flow of thought from content to discussion-based application. So why do we think that’s okay in an online environment?

At Pathwright, we don’t think that’s okay. That’s why we designed discussions to work in context, along with everything a student is learning.

This is about more than where discussion happens.

As I mentioned in my last rant about sidebars, interface design for online education is in its infancy. But one thing UI designers on education platforms can do better is to keep discussion at hand and in context.

At Pathwright, we don’t get everything right either. But we start by taking a design approach that begins with how great education happens in real life instead of taking the easier route of cobbling together existing design patterns like tacking on an online forum.

If you’d like to try out the difference for yourself, you can start creating an online course for free right now.

There are – and always will be – hundreds of features that we could build but haven't. If you’ve ever wondered about how we prioritize what to build, well…

Pathwright has many features already, and we launch new features or enhancements every 6 weeks. Even so, there are—and always will be—hundreds more features that we could build but haven't yet. 

If you’ve ever wondered about how we prioritize what to build, well . . . read on:

We love to hear suggestions for new features, so if you have one, please let us know. And just so you know what to expect, we'll respond in 1 of 3 ways:

1) That's on the roadmap. If your feature request is already on our roadmap, we'll confirm with two important qualifications: 

We usually can't confirm when a feature will be available (see "how we work").

Our roadmap is always subject to change (see "how we prioritize").

2) That's not on the roadmap. If we don't have plans to build it, we'll be up front about that.

3) That's an interesting suggestion! If we're not sure about it, we'll likely ask a few more questions and catalog the feature requests to consider later.

We work in 6-week cycles to complete 1-2 big features and a batch of smaller enhancements that are completable within 6 weeks.

We plan what to build next in between cycles. After each cycle, we have 2 planning weeks where we decide what roadmap features we’ll commit to for the next 6 weeks.

We pick which of the hundreds of features we could or should do at some point by . . . 

Selecting the highest impact features for all our educators that fit within our strategy and are within reach of our design and development resources during the next 6 weeks.

Prioritizing features that a partner funds and provides feedback and testing on when we can do so without impacting #1 significantly.

The primary users of Pathwright are the hundreds of thousands of students completing learning steps every day. None of these users pay us.

The primary users of Pathwright are the roughly 2 million learners completing steps every day. None of these users pay us.

Instead, they pay our customers who are made up of a much smaller group of school administrators, IT directors, and content creators from educational organizations of all sizes. (In fact, we have several customers who make way more money than we do.)

From a more conventional business perspective, it would make sense for us to prioritize designing primarily for the users who pay us first and then for the learners who don’t pay us, right?

That’s exactly what many of our competitors do, and it’s working for them, at least on business side of things. However, if you’ve ever used any of the more conventional LMSs (learning management systems) or marketing-oriented course platforms you’ve probably seen how this plays out: eventually, the product becomes 90% administrative actions, content authoring, and/or marketing tools, which is what 90% of the paying customers say they want. That leaves perhaps a measly 10% of features and polish focused on the actual learner experience (LX), which in contrast is where most 90% of the usage actually exists.

We take a different approach. Whenever we develop a new feature for Pathwright, we start with the learner experience first and then work our way back from there.

By starting with the learner experience we can:

Make the teacher’s job easier. Many of the jobs teachers have to do are not related to actually teaching. Reminding students about due dates, motivating them to catch up when they’re behind, and giving them a clear next step, are all things that Pathwright handles for teachers out of the box. Once curriculum is on Pathwright, a teacher can almost put it on “auto pilot” and focus their efforts on the more valuable things like one-on-one mentorship and feedback.

Reduce the support burden. We have schools with thousands of learners that have single digit support requests for an entire year. In fact we’ve had customers cancel their support system integrations with Pathwright simply because there wasn’t enough support to worry about. The LX design we put into our product saves a whole lot of time and money for our customers.

Avoid distorting the brand of our customers. It’s bizarre to me that many prestigious institutions and brands will use learning tools that look like they were designed a decade ago. Worse than that, the poor design often creates a negative first impression and a lot of frustration that gets transferred to the institution or teacher, not the software itself. At Pathwright we believe the learner experience should be clear, modern and beautiful so that it reflects the quality of teaching and guidance that our customers offer.

While the above approach may not be the most obvious business strategy, our team has been happy to grow slowly and steadily for years by putting the learner first every time.

When I tell people about Pathwright, I often hear a version of “man, my university’s software sucks, we should use yours.”

Hating your LMS (Learning Management System) is not an uncommon sentiment. Google “[LMS name] sucks” for pretty much any mainstream LMS, and you’ll find outpourings of ire from students and teachers listing all the ways they’ve been screwed by these poorly designed platforms.

While I wish we could help students dealing with crappy LMSs, the problems with the Higher Ed-LMS market run deeper than poor software design.

Below are a few reason why bad LMSs end up at even the most prestigious institutions.

Most mainstream LMSs were designed with little thought given to the students’ experience. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out (although it may take one to use the software). This seems like a bizarre choice from the outside since 80–90% of the users of an LMS are students, but it is intentional. Student experience isn’t a top priority to the big LMS vendors because the students are not the ones paying for the LMS!

LMSs are designed for the misinformed 💰people

Imagine a committee (when have committees ever made bad decisions?) composed of administrators, IT people, and the token student and/or teacher. For these committees, due diligence in LMS selection starts with a giant features list (one often found through a Google search or provided by fancy consultants). This list determines the “best” match for them.

I use quotes around “best” because the people helping them make this decision are often aggressive sales staff from LMS companies. As you might imagine, on the LMS side, this leads to an arms race of features— one that plays off the good intentions and fears of the committee.

The committee, with feature-FOMO, throws money at the problem. It’s the LMS that can check all the boxes on the list and that makes the most steakholders (this is a better way to spell it—you know it is)happy that takes the prize.

This leads to LMS software that is a rat’s nest of features that only “power users” can understand. Those features require conferences and time-sucking, on-site training for the primary users (students and teachers) to get any work done. The original committee might even regret their decision, but now they’re trapped by the contract—often a contract that lasts as long as 5 years (light-years in internet time). In the end, this is a losing game for everyone.

So how should universities pick an LMS? Start with the needs of your students and teachers. They are the primary users of the software and unless their needs are being met, you are making an expensive mistake. Below are a few tips for picking an LMS that will serve your school well:

Don’t fall into the money trap. Money won’t necessarily buy you the best software (repeat that 100 times). Also, signing a contract for any longer than one year makes no sense in the modern software world. Don’t do it!

Write a list of features you actually need by talking to the people who’ll actually use the software. You don’t need a pre-made check-sheet or consultant for this. Every university’s needs are different. This will take time and research (but you’re good at research!). The energy will be worth the mistakes it saves you from.

Remember, technology is just a tool. Software alone won’t turn bad teachers into good ones. And teachers are the key. Find software that helps them do their job better and then gets out of their way. They’re the ones helping students learn. And isn’t that why we’re all doing this anyway?

Thousands of teachers use Pathwright every day to design and teach courses to their team, class, or anyone in the world. If you’d like to design a course, we invite you to try out Pathwright for free. You’ve got nothing to lose!

We're Not Here to Change the World

Blocks, Not Pages, Are the Future Of the Web

Announcing Blocks

LMS Forums Are Broken

What's On the Roadmap?

Why We Design for the Learner First

Why Is Your School’s LMS So Bad?

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