Why the Future of Learning Starts with Building

By

-

September 29, 2026

Coding has always served two purposes: the intrinsic drive to build something, and the practical path to a lucrative career. Even the most passionate code aficionados don’t dream of variables or syntax — they want to make a website, a tool, a game. For years, the career upside was impossible to ignore. You could land a stable SWE job, bootstrap your own app, or join a buzzy startup as a first hire.

Generative AI flipped the script. AI now handles the repetitive tasks that used to define entry-level developer roles. At the same time, the barrier to entry for coding and building is lower than ever — you can spin up a working prototype with just an idea and a natural language prompt.

This shift hasn’t eliminated the desire to code, but it’s changed what and who coding is for. If you’re not learning to land a junior dev role, you’re learning to build the thing you’ve been imagining, to add a technical skill to your existing career, or to understand the tools you’re already using at work. And here’s the catch: those goals all require understanding your code, not just having code that works.

At Codecademy, all of these changes excite us about the future of learning to code. We’re introducing the AI Builder, a new project-based learning tool that flips the script by teaching you how to work with AI-generated code from the start. Our approach brings together the immediacy of modern AI tools and the rigor of real instructional design.

Why we created the AI Builder

AI’s speed and efficiency often come with a tradeoff; you can get working code immediately, but you don’t really know what it’s giving you or why it’s built a certain way. Developers use the term “vibe coding” to describe this phenomenon — it’s fast, fun, but shallow; great for demos, less great for long-term skill-building.

If your goal is to understand what you’re building, generic AI output alone won’t get you there. And the more you push these tools into real-world complexity, “the harder it is for them to give you exactly what you want,” says Zoe Bachman, Head of Learning at Codecademy.

Switch to Learn for behind-the-scenes insights and your personalized roadmap.

With the AI Builder you get an education along with the AI output. In the workspace, you can toggle between two tabs: Build, where you work directly with a project and can modify and change code in real time; and Learn, where you get a personalized learning roadmap that’s based on your project.

“We pair the experience of having a working app with a learning path that allows you to reverse engineer how it’s built, so you can deeply understand it and modify it confidently,” Zoe says. We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development “vibe learning” — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Build first; learn continuously

With AI Builder, you start with what you want to do: build the thing in your head. Whether that’s a habit tracker, a portfolio site, or the seed of a bigger idea, you don’t need to have prior coding knowledge to learn and build with the AI Builder. In other words, there are no pre-requisites for creation.

You create a prototype by typing what you’d like to create in natural language. The AI chatbot will ask a few clarifying questions about your needs and overall goal before generating the project. Once the project is created, you can use the chat function to continue describing what you want. (You’re also welcome to go right into the code and start making changes if you already know your way around!)

“It was fun to build something so quickly and be able to see the code and a learning plan for it,” says Grace Krishna, a Code Crew member who beta tested the AI Builder.

When you need clarity on what’s going on behind the scenes in your code, or you hit a wall with AI, that’s a great time to flip over to the Learn tab.

We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development ‘vibe learning’ — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Your project becomes the curriculum

Rather than teaching concepts in the abstract and hoping learners translate them later, AI Builder removes that translation tax entirely. “We’re showing you specifically your code from your project and helping you understand it,” Zoe says.

Rework your prototype in real time with the help of AI.

To build that personalized curriculum, the AI Builder breaks your project’s code into clear milestones and tasks. For each task, it generates an interactive learning loop, which is an activity designed to help you form a mental model of what your specific code is doing.

These loops help you understand the logic behind each part of your project, so you can confidently apply the same thinking to other sections, or even future projects. This approach also ensures everything you learn is directly relevant to what you’re making — so you don’t have to guess when you’ll ever use this.

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A key misconception about AI‑assisted development is that it makes learning superficial. AI Builder challenges that by grounding the entire experience in learning science rather than simple code generation. Our entire system is intentionally designed for you to retain knowledge. So, while it might not feel like you’re taking a course, you’re absorbing key concepts just by interacting with AI-generated code.

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Our educational AI chatbot is designed to guide you toward an answer through an in-depth questioning approach that’s based on the Socratic method of teaching. Instead of spitting out shortcuts or answers like AI typically does, you get strategic nudges, hints, and questions that build durable mental models.

Research on AI in education shows that just providing an answer makes it harder for learners to retain the information on their own. Zoe compares the Socratic AI to “a personalized tutor, facilitating you acquiring more knowledge, so you’re not totally left on your own.” Our method encourages you to think critically so you really grasp the concepts and can continue to use them in the real world.

Learning loops with real instructional design

Behind the scenes, every learning loop in the Learn tab is built on proven frameworks like inductive learning and the 5E model, a popular STEM teaching framework that’s shorthand for engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate.

You’ll notice that the questions and exercises in the Learn tab feel different than the rest of our courses and paths, and that’s intentional. “The learning loops are designed very well — they get you there inductively,” Zoe says. They’re exploratory without being overwhelming, and evaluative without feeling like tests.

Negar Vahid, a beta tester for the AI Builder appreciated the AI’s interactive question format. “The question-based learning feels engaging, and the starter project it builds is simple but useful,” she says.

This structure ensures you don’t develop the wrong mental models — a known risk in fully constructivist or student-centered environments — while still giving you the freedom to explore.

Why learn when AI can build?

There are some projects that are well-suited for simply vibe coding, like making a personal HTML website or a single-use script to automate a one-time task. Tools like Lovable and v0 are suited exactly for these types of projects.

The longer your code needs to live, and the more complex your project becomes, the more you need to actually understand what you’re building. Joe Holmes, Codecademy Curriculum Developer in the AI and machine learning domain, uses the term “ignorance debt” to describe what happens when you don’t:

“It’s like tech debt squared. It’s much, much worse,” Joe says. “You don’t know what kind of code is coming out. You just are only looking at: Does this kind of generally appear to be what I asked for? You don’t know if there are security flaws. You don’t know if there are performance flaws. You don’t know if you’re leaking sensitive information. You don’t know how to fix anything.”

The tipping point comes down to two factors: complexity and time. If you’re developing software professionally, you’re legally responsible for the code you output. If you’re building something that will serve actual users, you need to be accountable for security, performance, and maintainability. And if your project will need updates or fixes over time (which most do) understanding your codebase becomes essential, not optional.

The good news? Learning doesn’t have to feel like eating your vegetables. “Kids hate veggies and broccoli because we don’t cook it well enough to make it tasty when we first introduce it to them,” says Nhi Pham, Codecademy Curriculum Developer. The same is true for teaching AI: “If you do it well, you’re inspiring people to have these very hygienic practices when working with AI,” she says.

That’s exactly what AI Builder is designed to do — make learning feel as immediate and rewarding as building, so you develop good habits from the start rather than building a lifelong aversion to understanding your own code.

Get started with the AI Builder

AI isn’t a replacement for learning, it’s a tool — and a powerful one when it comes to education. Our new AI Builder allows for “just‑in‑time learning that’s highly personalized,” Zoe says. Even the best teachers or bootcamps can’t deliver that for every learner, on every project, instantly. Perhaps the most exciting vision is how AI changes what a learning environment can be.

Zoe described it beautifully: “I imagine the AI Builder as a workspace… like having all your resources around you and an AI tutor in the background.”

That’s the shift: from learning before you build to learning while you build. We can’t wait to see what you create.

Why the Future of Learning Starts with Building

By

onlinefreecourse

-

September 29, 2026

0

Coding has always served two purposes: the intrinsic drive to build something, and the practical path to a lucrative career. Even the most passionate code aficionados don’t dream of variables or syntax — they want to make a website, a tool, a game. For years, the career upside was impossible to ignore. You could land a stable SWE job, bootstrap your own app, or join a buzzy startup as a first hire.

Generative AI flipped the script. AI now handles the repetitive tasks that used to define entry-level developer roles. At the same time, the barrier to entry for coding and building is lower than ever — you can spin up a working prototype with just an idea and a natural language prompt.

This shift hasn’t eliminated the desire to code, but it’s changed what and who coding is for. If you’re not learning to land a junior dev role, you’re learning to build the thing you’ve been imagining, to add a technical skill to your existing career, or to understand the tools you’re already using at work. And here’s the catch: those goals all require understanding your code, not just having code that works.

At Codecademy, all of these changes excite us about the future of learning to code. We’re introducing the AI Builder, a new project-based learning tool that flips the script by teaching you how to work with AI-generated code from the start. Our approach brings together the immediacy of modern AI tools and the rigor of real instructional design.

Why we created the AI Builder

AI’s speed and efficiency often come with a tradeoff; you can get working code immediately, but you don’t really know what it’s giving you or why it’s built a certain way. Developers use the term “vibe coding” to describe this phenomenon — it’s fast, fun, but shallow; great for demos, less great for long-term skill-building.

If your goal is to understand what you’re building, generic AI output alone won’t get you there. And the more you push these tools into real-world complexity, “the harder it is for them to give you exactly what you want,” says Zoe Bachman, Head of Learning at Codecademy.

With the AI Builder you get an education along with the AI output. In the workspace, you can toggle between two tabs: Build, where you work directly with a project and can modify and change code in real time; and Learn, where you get a personalized learning roadmap that’s based on your project.

“We pair the experience of having a working app with a learning path that allows you to reverse engineer how it’s built, so you can deeply understand it and modify it confidently,” Zoe says. We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development “vibe learning” — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Build first; learn continuously

With AI Builder, you start with what you want to do: build the thing in your head. Whether that’s a habit tracker, a portfolio site, or the seed of a bigger idea, you don’t need to have prior coding knowledge to learn and build with the AI Builder. In other words, there are no pre-requisites for creation.

You create a prototype by typing what you’d like to create in natural language. The AI chatbot will ask a few clarifying questions about your needs and overall goal before generating the project. Once the project is created, you can use the chat function to continue describing what you want. (You’re also welcome to go right into the code and start making changes if you already know your way around!)

“It was fun to build something so quickly and be able to see the code and a learning plan for it,” says Grace Krishna, a Code Crew member who beta tested the AI Builder.

When you need clarity on what’s going on behind the scenes in your code, or you hit a wall with AI, that’s a great time to flip over to the Learn tab.

We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development ‘vibe learning’ — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Your project becomes the curriculum

Rather than teaching concepts in the abstract and hoping learners translate them later, AI Builder removes that translation tax entirely. “We’re showing you specifically your code from your project and helping you understand it,” Zoe says.

To build that personalized curriculum, the AI Builder breaks your project’s code into clear milestones and tasks. For each task, it generates an interactive learning loop, which is an activity designed to help you form a mental model of what your specific code is doing.

These loops help you understand the logic behind each part of your project, so you can confidently apply the same thinking to other sections, or even future projects. This approach also ensures everything you learn is directly relevant to what you’re making — so you don’t have to guess when you’ll ever use this.

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A key misconception about AI‑assisted development is that it makes learning superficial. AI Builder challenges that by grounding the entire experience in learning science rather than simple code generation. Our entire system is intentionally designed for you to retain knowledge. So, while it might not feel like you’re taking a course, you’re absorbing key concepts just by interacting with AI-generated code.

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Our educational AI chatbot is designed to guide you toward an answer through an in-depth questioning approach that’s based on the Socratic method of teaching. Instead of spitting out shortcuts or answers like AI typically does, you get strategic nudges, hints, and questions that build durable mental models.

Research on AI in education shows that just providing an answer makes it harder for learners to retain the information on their own. Zoe compares the Socratic AI to “a personalized tutor, facilitating you acquiring more knowledge, so you’re not totally left on your own.” Our method encourages you to think critically so you really grasp the concepts and can continue to use them in the real world.

Learning loops with real instructional design

Behind the scenes, every learning loop in the Learn tab is built on proven frameworks like inductive learning and the 5E model, a popular STEM teaching framework that’s shorthand for engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate.

You’ll notice that the questions and exercises in the Learn tab feel different than the rest of our courses and paths, and that’s intentional. “The learning loops are designed very well — they get you there inductively,” Zoe says. They’re exploratory without being overwhelming, and evaluative without feeling like tests.

Negar Vahid, a beta tester for the AI Builder appreciated the AI’s interactive question format. “The question-based learning feels engaging, and the starter project it builds is simple but useful,” she says.

This structure ensures you don’t develop the wrong mental models — a known risk in fully constructivist or student-centered environments — while still giving you the freedom to explore.

Why learn when AI can build?

There are some projects that are well-suited for simply vibe coding, like making a personal HTML website or a single-use script to automate a one-time task. Tools like Lovable and v0 are suited exactly for these types of projects.

The longer your code needs to live, and the more complex your project becomes, the more you need to actually understand what you’re building. Joe Holmes, Codecademy Curriculum Developer in the AI and machine learning domain, uses the term “ignorance debt” to describe what happens when you don’t:

“It’s like tech debt squared. It’s much, much worse,” Joe says. “You don’t know what kind of code is coming out. You just are only looking at: Does this kind of generally appear to be what I asked for? You don’t know if there are security flaws. You don’t know if there are performance flaws. You don’t know if you’re leaking sensitive information. You don’t know how to fix anything.”

The tipping point comes down to two factors: complexity and time. If you’re developing software professionally, you’re legally responsible for the code you output. If you’re building something that will serve actual users, you need to be accountable for security, performance, and maintainability. And if your project will need updates or fixes over time (which most do) understanding your codebase becomes essential, not optional.

The good news? Learning doesn’t have to feel like eating your vegetables. “Kids hate veggies and broccoli because we don’t cook it well enough to make it tasty when we first introduce it to them,” says Nhi Pham, Codecademy Curriculum Developer. The same is true for teaching AI: “If you do it well, you’re inspiring people to have these very hygienic practices when working with AI,” she says.

That’s exactly what AI Builder is designed to do — make learning feel as immediate and rewarding as building, so you develop good habits from the start rather than building a lifelong aversion to understanding your own code.

Get started with the AI Builder

AI isn’t a replacement for learning, it’s a tool — and a powerful one when it comes to education. Our new AI Builder allows for “just‑in‑time learning that’s highly personalized,” Zoe says. Even the best teachers or bootcamps can’t deliver that for every learner, on every project, instantly. Perhaps the most exciting vision is how AI changes what a learning environment can be.

Zoe described it beautifully: “I imagine the AI Builder as a workspace… like having all your resources around you and an AI tutor in the background.”

That’s the shift: from learning before you build to learning while you build. We can’t wait to see what you create.

Why the Future of Learning Starts with Building

By

onlinefreecourse

-

September 29, 2026

0

Coding has always served two purposes: the intrinsic drive to build something, and the practical path to a lucrative career. Even the most passionate code aficionados don’t dream of variables or syntax — they want to make a website, a tool, a game. For years, the career upside was impossible to ignore. You could land a stable SWE job, bootstrap your own app, or join a buzzy startup as a first hire.

Generative AI flipped the script. AI now handles the repetitive tasks that used to define entry-level developer roles. At the same time, the barrier to entry for coding and building is lower than ever — you can spin up a working prototype with just an idea and a natural language prompt.

This shift hasn’t eliminated the desire to code, but it’s changed what and who coding is for. If you’re not learning to land a junior dev role, you’re learning to build the thing you’ve been imagining, to add a technical skill to your existing career, or to understand the tools you’re already using at work. And here’s the catch: those goals all require understanding your code, not just having code that works.

At Codecademy, all of these changes excite us about the future of learning to code. We’re introducing the AI Builder, a new project-based learning tool that flips the script by teaching you how to work with AI-generated code from the start. Our approach brings together the immediacy of modern AI tools and the rigor of real instructional design.

Why we created the AI Builder

AI’s speed and efficiency often come with a tradeoff; you can get working code immediately, but you don’t really know what it’s giving you or why it’s built a certain way. Developers use the term “vibe coding” to describe this phenomenon — it’s fast, fun, but shallow; great for demos, less great for long-term skill-building.

If your goal is to understand what you’re building, generic AI output alone won’t get you there. And the more you push these tools into real-world complexity, “the harder it is for them to give you exactly what you want,” says Zoe Bachman, Head of Learning at Codecademy.

With the AI Builder you get an education along with the AI output. In the workspace, you can toggle between two tabs: Build, where you work directly with a project and can modify and change code in real time; and Learn, where you get a personalized learning roadmap that’s based on your project.

“We pair the experience of having a working app with a learning path that allows you to reverse engineer how it’s built, so you can deeply understand it and modify it confidently,” Zoe says. We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development “vibe learning” — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Build first; learn continuously

With AI Builder, you start with what you want to do: build the thing in your head. Whether that’s a habit tracker, a portfolio site, or the seed of a bigger idea, you don’t need to have prior coding knowledge to learn and build with the AI Builder. In other words, there are no pre-requisites for creation.

You create a prototype by typing what you’d like to create in natural language. The AI chatbot will ask a few clarifying questions about your needs and overall goal before generating the project. Once the project is created, you can use the chat function to continue describing what you want. (You’re also welcome to go right into the code and start making changes if you already know your way around!)

“It was fun to build something so quickly and be able to see the code and a learning plan for it,” says Grace Krishna, a Code Crew member who beta tested the AI Builder.

When you need clarity on what’s going on behind the scenes in your code, or you hit a wall with AI, that’s a great time to flip over to the Learn tab.

We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development ‘vibe learning’ — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Your project becomes the curriculum

Rather than teaching concepts in the abstract and hoping learners translate them later, AI Builder removes that translation tax entirely. “We’re showing you specifically your code from your project and helping you understand it,” Zoe says.

To build that personalized curriculum, the AI Builder breaks your project’s code into clear milestones and tasks. For each task, it generates an interactive learning loop, which is an activity designed to help you form a mental model of what your specific code is doing.

These loops help you understand the logic behind each part of your project, so you can confidently apply the same thinking to other sections, or even future projects. This approach also ensures everything you learn is directly relevant to what you’re making — so you don’t have to guess when you’ll ever use this.

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A key misconception about AI‑assisted development is that it makes learning superficial. AI Builder challenges that by grounding the entire experience in learning science rather than simple code generation. Our entire system is intentionally designed for you to retain knowledge. So, while it might not feel like you’re taking a course, you’re absorbing key concepts just by interacting with AI-generated code.

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Our educational AI chatbot is designed to guide you toward an answer through an in-depth questioning approach that’s based on the Socratic method of teaching. Instead of spitting out shortcuts or answers like AI typically does, you get strategic nudges, hints, and questions that build durable mental models.

Research on AI in education shows that just providing an answer makes it harder for learners to retain the information on their own. Zoe compares the Socratic AI to “a personalized tutor, facilitating you acquiring more knowledge, so you’re not totally left on your own.” Our method encourages you to think critically so you really grasp the concepts and can continue to use them in the real world.

Learning loops with real instructional design

Behind the scenes, every learning loop in the Learn tab is built on proven frameworks like inductive learning and the 5E model, a popular STEM teaching framework that’s shorthand for engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate.

You’ll notice that the questions and exercises in the Learn tab feel different than the rest of our courses and paths, and that’s intentional. “The learning loops are designed very well — they get you there inductively,” Zoe says. They’re exploratory without being overwhelming, and evaluative without feeling like tests.

Negar Vahid, a beta tester for the AI Builder appreciated the AI’s interactive question format. “The question-based learning feels engaging, and the starter project it builds is simple but useful,” she says.

This structure ensures you don’t develop the wrong mental models — a known risk in fully constructivist or student-centered environments — while still giving you the freedom to explore.

Why learn when AI can build?

There are some projects that are well-suited for simply vibe coding, like making a personal HTML website or a single-use script to automate a one-time task. Tools like Lovable and v0 are suited exactly for these types of projects.

The longer your code needs to live, and the more complex your project becomes, the more you need to actually understand what you’re building. Joe Holmes, Codecademy Curriculum Developer in the AI and machine learning domain, uses the term “ignorance debt” to describe what happens when you don’t:

“It’s like tech debt squared. It’s much, much worse,” Joe says. “You don’t know what kind of code is coming out. You just are only looking at: Does this kind of generally appear to be what I asked for? You don’t know if there are security flaws. You don’t know if there are performance flaws. You don’t know if you’re leaking sensitive information. You don’t know how to fix anything.”

The tipping point comes down to two factors: complexity and time. If you’re developing software professionally, you’re legally responsible for the code you output. If you’re building something that will serve actual users, you need to be accountable for security, performance, and maintainability. And if your project will need updates or fixes over time (which most do) understanding your codebase becomes essential, not optional.

The good news? Learning doesn’t have to feel like eating your vegetables. “Kids hate veggies and broccoli because we don’t cook it well enough to make it tasty when we first introduce it to them,” says Nhi Pham, Codecademy Curriculum Developer. The same is true for teaching AI: “If you do it well, you’re inspiring people to have these very hygienic practices when working with AI,” she says.

That’s exactly what AI Builder is designed to do — make learning feel as immediate and rewarding as building, so you develop good habits from the start rather than building a lifelong aversion to understanding your own code.

Get started with the AI Builder

AI isn’t a replacement for learning, it’s a tool — and a powerful one when it comes to education. Our new AI Builder allows for “just‑in‑time learning that’s highly personalized,” Zoe says. Even the best teachers or bootcamps can’t deliver that for every learner, on every project, instantly. Perhaps the most exciting vision is how AI changes what a learning environment can be.

Zoe described it beautifully: “I imagine the AI Builder as a workspace… like having all your resources around you and an AI tutor in the background.”

That’s the shift: from learning before you build to learning while you build. We can’t wait to see what you create.

E-Learning Tricks and Treats

By

onlinefreecourse

-

September 29, 2026

0

This is Voodoo voodoo . He is a little devil, wrapped in black and white fur that can create terror and joy in a single bound. Right after he jumps full throttle on me. He looks so quaint. Sure, he is eighty pounds, but he’s only two. I mention Voodoo here, because the name screams the “mysterious, unknown,” and at the same time, just by seeing him here (he’s playing tug of war), you smile with, well a smile.

For 2017, Halloween edition of Tricks and Treats, Voodoo has reached into his bag of toys, and removed the ones he sees as “treats for 2017”. He will keep those on the side for later. He equally tore out a few that he views as “tricks” and tossed them into the yard for nevermore.

Because I have a background in ‘dog language’, I am able to deceipher his thoughts on this scary evening.

Scare of The Night

No Halloween edition would be scary without having a couple of actual scary ghost photos/videos for the right mood. Shot by yours truly, uh me, not the dog.

a. Video of orbs from the Drovers Inn in Scotland. You start to see them around the 35-40 second mark.

b. Image of ghost on the door. Look down towards the bed. Some people say it is a little girl ghost. It didn’t appear until after I snapped the picture.

ghostie

c. Bonus – Orb in the room. 16996470_10210523893272232_3339381654891452469_n

treats

Litmos – Deserving of two handful of candies, with next generation feature sets, a wonderful video assessment piece, intiutitiveness and overall solid. Still needs better data visualization, like to see more video capabillities (but I expect to see that in all systems, franklystein). I expect big things for Litmos in 2018, one of which I hope is taking the e-commerce components from ViewCentral (an acquisiton) and using all that goodness into the Litmos system, along with a virtual wallet.

dominKnow – The cloud based authoring tool continue to strike a nice blend between authoring (its core) and the publish of responsive content that is actually responsive (not all authoring tools really can deliver that, fyi). I see the system for future growth in true digial learning (my take on digital learning). And beyond that? Only the Twilight Zone knows for sure (and yeah, the folks at dominKnow).

eLogic Learning – Hands down the best functionality as a whole in the industry. Do they need some tweaks? Sure. Data visualization, more video components, a touch of this and and a touch of that. Still though, a continued hot fudge ice cream sundae (dairy free).

Evolve – An authoring tool under the wraps. Think of them as a candy not too many people know about, but once you get your hands on it, you can’t get enough. Works will in conjuction with other tools, but for most folks will suffice as is. A darling, if you could ever call an authoring tool, that. Wait, I just did.

Mini Treats

A few high fives are in order

Growth Engineering – Gamification never looked so good or so crisp. Feature rich too. Ideal for employees.
Cornerstone Learning – New UI win on the learner homepage. A big win finally. Need though some continuance throughtout the rest of the learner side, but hey a win, is a win in my book.
Unicorn LMS- Financial Services’s superhero of a system. Still doing it the right way, and if you are not FS, don’t worry, Minds-I (hands down the best mobile app for online learning out there) is available to you, even with your current LMS provider.
Create LMS – NextGen features galore with more on their way. A system to watch in 2017 that delivered. I’ll keep them on my system to watch again for 2018. Reminds me of another little darling I spotted back when no one had them on their radar (Docebo). Create has the potential to be even better. Definitely keep an eye on em.
Branchtrack – An authoring tool for creating scenarios that needs to be seen in the light. Easy to use, lots of possibilities. Pushes the whole branching angle a bit, but it does deliver what it says it can. You will just need to add your flavor to it (humans are extra).
Built-in authoring tools – More vendors are including them into their systems. The other day okay a former post, said I saw three that could be a standalone. I now say a fourth, via Eurkeos, a LMS. They build their own authoring tool and with their background in course development it shows.

tricks

Call them the brown and orange wrapped treats some homes like to give out – might as well as toss in some rocks while they are at it. Candy corn is the name of the game here, with an occassional pixie stix from 1978 tossed in for good measure.

There are plenty of vendors who could be part of this tasty err trick, but I’m not one to call out folks, when they are doing what I see as not ideal in their techniques.

Ha ha. I’m kidding.

Saba – Look the Learn side I like for the most part. Its strong, their deep learning is top notch and mobile is solid, but why oh why for demonstations do they have to turn on every module, even if the customer is not seeking them in the first place?

They did it to a recent client of mine and since then I have heard from others (not clients) mentioning similar experiences. Saba tells me that the “we show everything” in the demo is standard practice, to show what is possible (an ecosystem angle with HCM). That’s fine, but at least tell people who are in the room, that these XXXX are extra modules and not included in what they are looking at buying. In my case, they didn’t. Here’s a thought. Show what folks only what they are eyeing to buy (in your formal demonstration) and then mention others afterwards.

Docebo’s latest platform module. I like what it has to offer for the most part, the skills assessment piece if you will (it has other items too), but why can’t it be part of the LMS to begin with, rather than an additional cost? The same approach with coach/ask an expert/curation module. Why not just sell the system, with it all included and let the person decide when to use it or not? i.e. one flat price for it, not “included but extra costs tied into it’ or “extra cost for each.”

Competency management and skills assessments are being seen quite a bit more, especially on the skills piece of the pie, but it should be all in, not cut up like that Jack o Latern you just smashed on Mr.Cunningham’s yard.

Skillsoft Percepio and other vendors who rush out systems not yet ready for prime time. I just am at a loss here. This approach of lets get it to the market, and then when you ask for some standard feature sets you see in LMSs and heck even in most learning platforms, the retort is “its on our roadmap” or “upcoming version”, should say – let’s have it before we launch.

I’m not talking about extremes here, I’m talking about the core standards to any LMS (there are 16 that I identified to be considered an “LMS”, of which six are very common in learning platforms, hence the identification as such.)

Previous entrants to this “launch now” angle included Adobe Captivate Prime (when they debuted, and still they are missing some core features), Linkedin Learning – missing a few LP commons and several core standards, and Bridge by Instructure (again, still missing some core).

Content marketplaces angle – I’m a huge fan of course marketplaces and have noted that I saw them as a growth opportunity for quite a while. I still think that way today, but what I’m not a fan of is the lack of transparency when course/content marketplaces are noted with vendors who offer them these days. With some vendors the marketplace is implied (or can be my the reader) to be included as part of the system, i.e. everything in the marketplace, the courses, the resources, the content are free. In reality though, most of it is not free. Okay, majority plus is not free. I’ll take an asterik for now if that is all you can do, but by doing nothing you are letting folks believe it is included – as in everything when they get the system, and they pay nothing.

Vendors love to spin the “well, people know that,” pitch, but let me tell you something – they don’t.

Bottom Line

Nothing else to say.

Except one minor thing,

“Happy Halloween.”

(add your own scary sounds here).

E-Learning 24/7

Blog Nov 7th – Top Forecasts for 2018.

The post E-Learning Tricks and Treats appeared first on FindAnLMS.

Review of Linkedin Learning

By

onlinefreecourse

-

September 29, 2026

0

“If you have complaints or concerns, maybe you should write a blog.”

I never knew that it was possible. That I’d be honored with such a retort as the one above, from a salesperson at a booth at ATDTK17. At the “Linkedin Learning” booth no less.

Prior to that, another interesting quote was presented to me.

“We believe the future of learning is AICC.”

When asked why the system does not support SCORM. Once the individual found out that I wrote a blog, the wanted to clarify that it was not “Linkedin’s view’ the future of learning is AICC, rather it was their own personal view.

Had I not stated that I wrote a blog, would the individual have stipulated it was their own opinion?

Because when the future of learning was presented to me, I never said I wrote a blog prior to or after the statement.

I focus only on this, because how many other folks were told the same thing, without the mentioning of the salesperson’s own view on the topic?

I’m not blaming the salesperson for making this statement. If this is what Linkedin believes, so be it.

If the salesperson was misinformed by whomever provided her this information, than that individual should provide their employees with what is the actual reason (if AICC is not the future of learning).

And honestly, it shouldn’t be. Because AICC is not.

Unless, it is 2000.

Linkedin Learning

Early Takeaways

a. You can go from the “learner” side to the “admin side” by clicking the “Admin” link on the learner side BUT to go back, you need to keep open the learner page, while you are in the admin page. Thus, best to use a browser that has tabs.

And yes, you read that right, you have to keep open the learner page (I had a browser with tabs) in one tab, and click back and forth with your admin tab.

b. When you added a “new group” in order to see it on the “group page”, you have to refresh your browser. Otherwise it won’t appear.

c. When wanting to add users to a group, and you have the group window open, in order to see the listing of the groups, you have a couple of choices, “by letter, like ‘a’ and everything that has ‘a’ in it appears, or by the group name.”

I wished I could see the entire group list in that pop-up window, rather than trying to remember the “group name”. My group never showed up in the group pop-up window. I had forgot to refresh my screen.

d. Some of the courses had times like nine minutes in the catalog search, but when you went into the course, it’s various modules – which in the one I was looking at was chapters, were all over the place.

One chapter had pages that were 3 minutes for one topic or area, 5 minutes for another, seven minutes for this one and so forth.

In other words, non one chapter in that course was only nine minutes in length. On top of that, total run time was something like 40 minutes.

I found several courses that were over an hour in running time. One random selection was two hours and 40 minutes. Another was over four hours. .

One of the marketing angles that Linkedin Learning makes is the pitch of micr0-learning. I’m sorry, a course that is an hour or more in length is not a micro-learning course.

The UI/UX on each side was funky. The admin side really was challenging.

The adding a new course, was more of editing and adding sections angle. It is hard to explain, but in the basics, you have sections of the course.

You go into the course, and add your own sections to it, which becomes a new chapter if you will and thus you go from there.

I saw where you could add text, but never saw where you could actually add your own video pieces.

And my inquiry about how it worked, while provided back to me and shown, just increased the confusion. Yes, I was told it is a built-in authoring tool, but no, you cannot build your own course from the ground-up.

Analytics

If you are expecting some decent analytical data, expect to be dismayed. I have seen a few vendors go with the histogram angle, but unless I can click the “dot” for further info, I really so zero benefit is just showing me the “dots”. I should be able to drill down.

With Linkedin Learning you cannot, nor does it dive in. Why would I care about unique logins? I can’t even see that as a plus for external B2B/B2C.

For B2B/B2C what are people buying, where are they going and blah blah.

I’m all about who is using the system, how often, how long (I’m sorry, just showing the dates and hours viewed – says what?).

I want what chapters they are going into/pages, and so forth – give me the gritty of it all – that way I can assess what is working, what is not, what do I need to create as an additional course(s), where are the gaps in my learning and on and no.

Courses viewed are just the number of courses viewed and by date. Again, what does that really tell me as someone running training and or learning?

Heck, even HR overseeing training or L&D? ZERO. I cannot extract anything from that to help my learners or customers and especially my training. Gap what exactly?

The system shows the “most popular courses” – but the unique viewers is again, worthless. On the flip side, I do like the “visual” showing of the course. But, the duration of the course isn’t relevant.

Again, how is that supposed to help my training or L&D at my place of business?

That five folks viewed the course that is 10 min and 33 seconds, means what? Did they all watch the entire course? You can’t tell with this snippet of high level info. Better to skip duration and give me better extraction of info – which you can do at a high level.

3rd party authoring tools and third party content providers.

The system does not accept third party authoring tools (i.e. courses built in those tools) nor any third party content – from another vendor.

Thus if you have Skillsoft courses and want to upload into Linkedin Learning you are out of luck.

Or if you desire to upload that awesome video course you built in Studio, sorry it is not happening.

Certificates

Only the learner can add them to the course/content/whatever they completed. The administrator cannot do this, nor create them or edit them or upload them and so forth.

Reports

No ad-hoc. See below for the reports available in the system.

Logs

There has been a slight uptick in the number of vendors in the industry that have started to include “logs”. I have mixed feelings about that, but this log is a listing of the reports you downloaded, the period, among other items.

The better word to use here is ‘Report Activity’ rather than “previous downloads”. Semantics make all the difference in the world.

Multilingual

If you want multilingual it can be done, but it is not out of the box for free.

You have to let them know what language you want and they will add it to the system, prior to go-live. The learning platform does not have a lot of languages to select from, as I recall, not even some staples like Latin American Spanish.

Feature wise, I was surprised how poor the system was in the area.

I couldn’t figure out if it was just the Lynda.com site re-branded or if Linkedin Learning had overhauled this thing or it was built from ground-up with the Lynda.com content just pressed in there.

In the speaker’s lounge, there was a person who had worked at Lynda.com and gave me the impression that it was the Lynda.com platform just re-branded.

I didn’t delve into details, since the pronouncement came unsolicited.

What I did like

The admin home page providing some help on the page. The rest of it, uh overhaul would be the appropriate word here. A dashboard is a dashboard – high level for the administrator. That is not the case here.

Course Catalog

I like the visual look on it. I couldn’t figure out what is the difference between a video which is covering information that enables people to extract knowledge and thus learn versus a course, which is uh, a video too (at least the ones I looked at).

Course Transcript with the course being shown

While the course is playing there is a transcript below the video. You can highlight any of the text and it will go right to where that sentence, phrase is in the course.

I liked that, but what I felt was missing was the ability to move over those various pieces on the side (two column approach) and then allow the user to go back and pick any of those phrases, or paragraphs afterward.

Secondly, the course I tested it with, the “video” was on the player without any navigation. In other words, you just went to the area in the video following a linear approach.

Sure, you could go from far to the right in the video, back to the left start of the video, but I would get super bored with it.

Thus, the two column approach makes more sense – it just flows better.

Number of courses

I was told by one of the salespeople that there are over 9,000 courses in the platform. When I asked whether or not, Linkedin culled (i.e. went thru each course ) and cleaned up – i.e. removed the ones that were poor, outdated, and so forth, I was told in no uncertain terms that yes, the content development team does do that.

Based on what I saw, again random selections, it did not seem to be the case.

Bottom Line

I never understood the value or reasons why LinkedIn would pay 1.5 billion dollars to buy a 3rd party content provider (i.e. Lynda.com).

I mean, I got the reason why, but LinkedIn IMO hasn’t maximized what they could and should have done out of the gate.

That is part of the problem.

The other, and the one which this review is focused upon, is the Linkedin Learning solution itself.

I went in expecting to be stunned in a plus way.

What I got was something else.

And it wasn’t good

More of a minus.

E-Learning 24/7

Note: You can also interface Linkedin Learning into your own LMS.

The post Review of Linkedin Learning appeared first on FindAnLMS.

To be or not to be Moodle

By

onlinefreecourse

-

September 29, 2026

0

Right now you are probably in one of three camps when it comes to open source LMSs, specifically Moodle:

Huge fan and most likely have it
Not a fan of it
Thinking of soup, I mean Noodles!

And you may be thinking, okay, here it comes – here comes the “hate” with Moodle.

It is not hate that I bring upon you good folk, rather it is the facts concerning Moodle and to be fair a comparison between it and in general commercial systems (since feature sets may differ, systems do differ to a degree, design, UI, my mom’s BBQ chicken (mmm), etc.)

I humbly thank you; well, well, well

Moodle has a very hardcore fan base and I applaud that.

I wish many products in the e-learning market had such a fan base, oh wait, Articulate does, but on the LMS side of the house, not really. I mean people either really love their system, dislike it and stick with it, or dislike it and search out another platform, but Moodle has fanatics (and I mean no disrespect to that).

Who are the core of these fanatics? Well, clearly it comes from the education crowd or as we pitch it in e-learning, edtech (which is e-learning education, i.e. education technology, blah blah).

Anyway, it is education. This is Moodle’s core audience. But there are plenty of folks on the corporate side that are using Moodle too. As many as education? Uh, no not even close.

But both audiences are using it and I will add that under the corporate umbrella, I will slide in non-profit, association, etc.

The heartache

With so much fanfare at least from the Moodle crowd and those who are seeking an open source system (BTW there are plenty out there, not just Moodle), the question on whether to go with Moodle or not, is something that happens on a daily basis.

Spend a few hours zinging around Linkedin and you will find people touting the benefits of Moodle, perceiving Moodle as the best choice including better than commercial systems and so on.

What I rarely see are people who have used Moodle and found issues with it or ended up scraping it, and then posting about it. Which surprises me, because there are plenty of folks out there who thought Moodle was the route to go, heavy customized it, then found out the minuses on Moodle – too late I might add.

Must give us pause

There are commercial systems built on Moodle and heavily customized. Yes, Totara is built on Moodle, but I am talking more about some very well known commercial systems who have so customized it, that it no longer appears as it once was. Here you also find two camps of the customization commercial angle

Initial infrastructure, but so heavily customized that any updates, etc. are built by the vendor themselves and in essence it is just the pieces of the structure. These vendors do not use any items, plugins, etc., from Moodle community. I should add there are systems built on Drupal, DNN too.
Built on Moodle, state that they are built on it, and any updates i.e. plugins, add-ons, features come from the Moodle community. What you get is a customized version of Moodle, but you can still go into the code and tweak it yourself – if you have that expertise.

On the latter side, the downer is that you are paying for something you can get for free. Sure, they have customized it, but those “new features” etc. come from the community, the same community you could go to and get it yourself.

I have no problem with that, nor those folks who do other things but offer to customers a customized system they built on Moodle. What bothers me are those folks who do it, but do not provide the Moodle code – as they are supposed to, by using Moodle.

As for those who do include the Moodle code for free download but sell a customized version, again no issues with it. In fact, they can easily become a very profitable platform, quickly I might add.

As Hamlet once said, “Tis Moodle Facts”

Before I delve into the comparison between commercial and Moodle, let’s put out some facts – real facts on Moodle.

It’s free
It requires heavy customization. Moodle is not a turnkey platform, i.e. out of the box ready to go
You either build your own plugins or get them from the Moodle community, which is very active
It has a reputation for poor documentation
Tutorials on the net do exist – many people are unaware of that
It was developed as a CMS not a LMS – surprise! But, it is used as a LMS
It was developed for the education community, which as noted above is still its core audience
It can either look good or look bad, because of the customization. Most of the ones I have seen (and not customized by a vendor per se), really are not that impressive. No one is going to mistake the UI for uber Modern (again, sans vendor build).
Unlimited learners

Slings and Arrows

There are costs involved which surprises many people – because it is free. But, you know that “customization” statement comes into play, plus something else people tend to forget.

It requires resources (people) to build the system and maintain it. If there is an issue, you need to have someone fix it. Companies that use Moodle tend to have a good size staff in-house to handle it. Those who do not, are often caught off guard. And even if you have the staff in-house, the last time I looked, they still cost money. I mean a person who is a FT employee, gets benefits (I assume), and a salary. Thus, they are not free.
If you hire someone, they are a resource. If you do it, it is best to get someone with Moodle experience and those people tend to cost more than non-Moodle background folks
Customization can be pricey, depending on what you do.
You will need a help desk or support, because when an issue arises, people will want help. They might go to your administrator, but they – i.e. your admin – still needs help.
Updates, maintenance are your responsibility (Again, whoever is handling it)
It has to house somewhere. This is something people tend to forget. Which means you have to either have the servers in-house (and again, have to factor in the server cost – which many tend to not do) or have it hosted on the web. Perhaps you use Amazon S3 or Rackspace – you pay a monthly fee for either of them, or any of the other server farms out there. Some folks have it hosted via a service provider they use for other things. Regardless, it is not free.
Additional fees can spring up – some people use APIs from other products, including those that are fee based. If you have thousands of registrants, you might need to have a company oversee that to get them into your platform.
Training – as in you train the admins how to use it – you handle yourself. Thus, you need to have the expertise and knowledge to do it. The worst thing you can do, is have the person who built the system (Assuming they do not have a training or teaching background) provide the training. Just because they are an expert in building Moodle, doesn’t necessarily make them a great trainer/teacher.
It is not uncommon to see yearly budgets for Moodle in the range of 80K to 150K or even higher and that likely does not include the resources factor (that we tend to forget).

You will also need to stay current with the latest technology and capabilities – something that many of us do not have the time to do or knowledge or background to do so (and there is nothing wrong with that).

Some of my IT friends, gurus in their own right, are not up with the latest technology or capabilities. Sure, you as a Moodle person could rely solely on the community to provide everything you need, but is that something you would want to do on a daily or yearly basis?

That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit

I have seen schools including HE who have created really amazing UI design. Heck even better than some okay a chunk of commercial systems. Equally, I have seen quite a few schools including HE who have done the best they can, but fall short.

The point is, just like anything there is slick and there is dated.

Bottom Line

To be Moodle or not to be Moodle, that is the question.

For it isn’t really free, nor universally easy to build or use (learner and admin side), nor something for everyone.

And I’m not sure Hamlet would be able to provide the answer.

Maybe Rosencrantz.

E-Learning 24/7

The post To be or not to be Moodle appeared first on FindAnLMS.

Why the Future of Learning Starts with Building

By

onlinefreecourse

-

September 29, 2026

0

Coding has always served two purposes: the intrinsic drive to build something, and the practical path to a lucrative career. Even the most passionate code aficionados don’t dream of variables or syntax — they want to make a website, a tool, a game. For years, the career upside was impossible to ignore. You could land a stable SWE job, bootstrap your own app, or join a buzzy startup as a first hire.

Generative AI flipped the script. AI now handles the repetitive tasks that used to define entry-level developer roles. At the same time, the barrier to entry for coding and building is lower than ever — you can spin up a working prototype with just an idea and a natural language prompt.

This shift hasn’t eliminated the desire to code, but it’s changed what and who coding is for. If you’re not learning to land a junior dev role, you’re learning to build the thing you’ve been imagining, to add a technical skill to your existing career, or to understand the tools you’re already using at work. And here’s the catch: those goals all require understanding your code, not just having code that works.

At Codecademy, all of these changes excite us about the future of learning to code. We’re introducing the AI Builder, a new project-based learning tool that flips the script by teaching you how to work with AI-generated code from the start. Our approach brings together the immediacy of modern AI tools and the rigor of real instructional design.

Why we created the AI Builder

AI’s speed and efficiency often come with a tradeoff; you can get working code immediately, but you don’t really know what it’s giving you or why it’s built a certain way. Developers use the term “vibe coding” to describe this phenomenon — it’s fast, fun, but shallow; great for demos, less great for long-term skill-building.

If your goal is to understand what you’re building, generic AI output alone won’t get you there. And the more you push these tools into real-world complexity, “the harder it is for them to give you exactly what you want,” says Zoe Bachman, Head of Learning at Codecademy.

With the AI Builder you get an education along with the AI output. In the workspace, you can toggle between two tabs: Build, where you work directly with a project and can modify and change code in real time; and Learn, where you get a personalized learning roadmap that’s based on your project.

“We pair the experience of having a working app with a learning path that allows you to reverse engineer how it’s built, so you can deeply understand it and modify it confidently,” Zoe says. We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development “vibe learning” — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Build first; learn continuously

With AI Builder, you start with what you want to do: build the thing in your head. Whether that’s a habit tracker, a portfolio site, or the seed of a bigger idea, you don’t need to have prior coding knowledge to learn and build with the AI Builder. In other words, there are no pre-requisites for creation.

You create a prototype by typing what you’d like to create in natural language. The AI chatbot will ask a few clarifying questions about your needs and overall goal before generating the project. Once the project is created, you can use the chat function to continue describing what you want. (You’re also welcome to go right into the code and start making changes if you already know your way around!)

“It was fun to build something so quickly and be able to see the code and a learning plan for it,” says Grace Krishna, a Code Crew member who beta tested the AI Builder.

When you need clarity on what’s going on behind the scenes in your code, or you hit a wall with AI, that’s a great time to flip over to the Learn tab.

We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development ‘vibe learning’ — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Your project becomes the curriculum

Rather than teaching concepts in the abstract and hoping learners translate them later, AI Builder removes that translation tax entirely. “We’re showing you specifically your code from your project and helping you understand it,” Zoe says.

To build that personalized curriculum, the AI Builder breaks your project’s code into clear milestones and tasks. For each task, it generates an interactive learning loop, which is an activity designed to help you form a mental model of what your specific code is doing.

These loops help you understand the logic behind each part of your project, so you can confidently apply the same thinking to other sections, or even future projects. This approach also ensures everything you learn is directly relevant to what you’re making — so you don’t have to guess when you’ll ever use this.

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A key misconception about AI‑assisted development is that it makes learning superficial. AI Builder challenges that by grounding the entire experience in learning science rather than simple code generation. Our entire system is intentionally designed for you to retain knowledge. So, while it might not feel like you’re taking a course, you’re absorbing key concepts just by interacting with AI-generated code.

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Our educational AI chatbot is designed to guide you toward an answer through an in-depth questioning approach that’s based on the Socratic method of teaching. Instead of spitting out shortcuts or answers like AI typically does, you get strategic nudges, hints, and questions that build durable mental models.

Research on AI in education shows that just providing an answer makes it harder for learners to retain the information on their own. Zoe compares the Socratic AI to “a personalized tutor, facilitating you acquiring more knowledge, so you’re not totally left on your own.” Our method encourages you to think critically so you really grasp the concepts and can continue to use them in the real world.

Learning loops with real instructional design

Behind the scenes, every learning loop in the Learn tab is built on proven frameworks like inductive learning and the 5E model, a popular STEM teaching framework that’s shorthand for engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate.

You’ll notice that the questions and exercises in the Learn tab feel different than the rest of our courses and paths, and that’s intentional. “The learning loops are designed very well — they get you there inductively,” Zoe says. They’re exploratory without being overwhelming, and evaluative without feeling like tests.

Negar Vahid, a beta tester for the AI Builder appreciated the AI’s interactive question format. “The question-based learning feels engaging, and the starter project it builds is simple but useful,” she says.

This structure ensures you don’t develop the wrong mental models — a known risk in fully constructivist or student-centered environments — while still giving you the freedom to explore.

Why learn when AI can build?

There are some projects that are well-suited for simply vibe coding, like making a personal HTML website or a single-use script to automate a one-time task. Tools like Lovable and v0 are suited exactly for these types of projects.

The longer your code needs to live, and the more complex your project becomes, the more you need to actually understand what you’re building. Joe Holmes, Codecademy Curriculum Developer in the AI and machine learning domain, uses the term “ignorance debt” to describe what happens when you don’t:

“It’s like tech debt squared. It’s much, much worse,” Joe says. “You don’t know what kind of code is coming out. You just are only looking at: Does this kind of generally appear to be what I asked for? You don’t know if there are security flaws. You don’t know if there are performance flaws. You don’t know if you’re leaking sensitive information. You don’t know how to fix anything.”

The tipping point comes down to two factors: complexity and time. If you’re developing software professionally, you’re legally responsible for the code you output. If you’re building something that will serve actual users, you need to be accountable for security, performance, and maintainability. And if your project will need updates or fixes over time (which most do) understanding your codebase becomes essential, not optional.

The good news? Learning doesn’t have to feel like eating your vegetables. “Kids hate veggies and broccoli because we don’t cook it well enough to make it tasty when we first introduce it to them,” says Nhi Pham, Codecademy Curriculum Developer. The same is true for teaching AI: “If you do it well, you’re inspiring people to have these very hygienic practices when working with AI,” she says.

That’s exactly what AI Builder is designed to do — make learning feel as immediate and rewarding as building, so you develop good habits from the start rather than building a lifelong aversion to understanding your own code.

Get started with the AI Builder

AI isn’t a replacement for learning, it’s a tool — and a powerful one when it comes to education. Our new AI Builder allows for “just‑in‑time learning that’s highly personalized,” Zoe says. Even the best teachers or bootcamps can’t deliver that for every learner, on every project, instantly. Perhaps the most exciting vision is how AI changes what a learning environment can be.

Zoe described it beautifully: “I imagine the AI Builder as a workspace… like having all your resources around you and an AI tutor in the background.”

That’s the shift: from learning before you build to learning while you build. We can’t wait to see what you create.

Why the Future of Learning Starts with Building

By

onlinefreecourse

-

September 28, 2026

0

Coding has always served two purposes: the intrinsic drive to build something, and the practical path to a lucrative career. Even the most passionate code aficionados don’t dream of variables or syntax — they want to make a website, a tool, a game. For years, the career upside was impossible to ignore. You could land a stable SWE job, bootstrap your own app, or join a buzzy startup as a first hire.

Generative AI flipped the script. AI now handles the repetitive tasks that used to define entry-level developer roles. At the same time, the barrier to entry for coding and building is lower than ever — you can spin up a working prototype with just an idea and a natural language prompt.

This shift hasn’t eliminated the desire to code, but it’s changed what and who coding is for. If you’re not learning to land a junior dev role, you’re learning to build the thing you’ve been imagining, to add a technical skill to your existing career, or to understand the tools you’re already using at work. And here’s the catch: those goals all require understanding your code, not just having code that works.

At Codecademy, all of these changes excite us about the future of learning to code. We’re introducing the AI Builder, a new project-based learning tool that flips the script by teaching you how to work with AI-generated code from the start. Our approach brings together the immediacy of modern AI tools and the rigor of real instructional design.

Why we created the AI Builder

AI’s speed and efficiency often come with a tradeoff; you can get working code immediately, but you don’t really know what it’s giving you or why it’s built a certain way. Developers use the term “vibe coding” to describe this phenomenon — it’s fast, fun, but shallow; great for demos, less great for long-term skill-building.

If your goal is to understand what you’re building, generic AI output alone won’t get you there. And the more you push these tools into real-world complexity, “the harder it is for them to give you exactly what you want,” says Zoe Bachman, Head of Learning at Codecademy.

With the AI Builder you get an education along with the AI output. In the workspace, you can toggle between two tabs: Build, where you work directly with a project and can modify and change code in real time; and Learn, where you get a personalized learning roadmap that’s based on your project.

“We pair the experience of having a working app with a learning path that allows you to reverse engineer how it’s built, so you can deeply understand it and modify it confidently,” Zoe says. We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development “vibe learning” — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Build first; learn continuously

With AI Builder, you start with what you want to do: build the thing in your head. Whether that’s a habit tracker, a portfolio site, or the seed of a bigger idea, you don’t need to have prior coding knowledge to learn and build with the AI Builder. In other words, there are no pre-requisites for creation.

You create a prototype by typing what you’d like to create in natural language. The AI chatbot will ask a few clarifying questions about your needs and overall goal before generating the project. Once the project is created, you can use the chat function to continue describing what you want. (You’re also welcome to go right into the code and start making changes if you already know your way around!)

“It was fun to build something so quickly and be able to see the code and a learning plan for it,” says Grace Krishna, a Code Crew member who beta tested the AI Builder.

When you need clarity on what’s going on behind the scenes in your code, or you hit a wall with AI, that’s a great time to flip over to the Learn tab.

We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development ‘vibe learning’ — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Your project becomes the curriculum

Rather than teaching concepts in the abstract and hoping learners translate them later, AI Builder removes that translation tax entirely. “We’re showing you specifically your code from your project and helping you understand it,” Zoe says.

To build that personalized curriculum, the AI Builder breaks your project’s code into clear milestones and tasks. For each task, it generates an interactive learning loop, which is an activity designed to help you form a mental model of what your specific code is doing.

These loops help you understand the logic behind each part of your project, so you can confidently apply the same thinking to other sections, or even future projects. This approach also ensures everything you learn is directly relevant to what you’re making — so you don’t have to guess when you’ll ever use this.

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A key misconception about AI‑assisted development is that it makes learning superficial. AI Builder challenges that by grounding the entire experience in learning science rather than simple code generation. Our entire system is intentionally designed for you to retain knowledge. So, while it might not feel like you’re taking a course, you’re absorbing key concepts just by interacting with AI-generated code.

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Our educational AI chatbot is designed to guide you toward an answer through an in-depth questioning approach that’s based on the Socratic method of teaching. Instead of spitting out shortcuts or answers like AI typically does, you get strategic nudges, hints, and questions that build durable mental models.

Research on AI in education shows that just providing an answer makes it harder for learners to retain the information on their own. Zoe compares the Socratic AI to “a personalized tutor, facilitating you acquiring more knowledge, so you’re not totally left on your own.” Our method encourages you to think critically so you really grasp the concepts and can continue to use them in the real world.

Learning loops with real instructional design

Behind the scenes, every learning loop in the Learn tab is built on proven frameworks like inductive learning and the 5E model, a popular STEM teaching framework that’s shorthand for engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate.

You’ll notice that the questions and exercises in the Learn tab feel different than the rest of our courses and paths, and that’s intentional. “The learning loops are designed very well — they get you there inductively,” Zoe says. They’re exploratory without being overwhelming, and evaluative without feeling like tests.

Negar Vahid, a beta tester for the AI Builder appreciated the AI’s interactive question format. “The question-based learning feels engaging, and the starter project it builds is simple but useful,” she says.

This structure ensures you don’t develop the wrong mental models — a known risk in fully constructivist or student-centered environments — while still giving you the freedom to explore.

Why learn when AI can build?

There are some projects that are well-suited for simply vibe coding, like making a personal HTML website or a single-use script to automate a one-time task. Tools like Lovable and v0 are suited exactly for these types of projects.

The longer your code needs to live, and the more complex your project becomes, the more you need to actually understand what you’re building. Joe Holmes, Codecademy Curriculum Developer in the AI and machine learning domain, uses the term “ignorance debt” to describe what happens when you don’t:

“It’s like tech debt squared. It’s much, much worse,” Joe says. “You don’t know what kind of code is coming out. You just are only looking at: Does this kind of generally appear to be what I asked for? You don’t know if there are security flaws. You don’t know if there are performance flaws. You don’t know if you’re leaking sensitive information. You don’t know how to fix anything.”

The tipping point comes down to two factors: complexity and time. If you’re developing software professionally, you’re legally responsible for the code you output. If you’re building something that will serve actual users, you need to be accountable for security, performance, and maintainability. And if your project will need updates or fixes over time (which most do) understanding your codebase becomes essential, not optional.

The good news? Learning doesn’t have to feel like eating your vegetables. “Kids hate veggies and broccoli because we don’t cook it well enough to make it tasty when we first introduce it to them,” says Nhi Pham, Codecademy Curriculum Developer. The same is true for teaching AI: “If you do it well, you’re inspiring people to have these very hygienic practices when working with AI,” she says.

That’s exactly what AI Builder is designed to do — make learning feel as immediate and rewarding as building, so you develop good habits from the start rather than building a lifelong aversion to understanding your own code.

Get started with the AI Builder

AI isn’t a replacement for learning, it’s a tool — and a powerful one when it comes to education. Our new AI Builder allows for “just‑in‑time learning that’s highly personalized,” Zoe says. Even the best teachers or bootcamps can’t deliver that for every learner, on every project, instantly. Perhaps the most exciting vision is how AI changes what a learning environment can be.

Zoe described it beautifully: “I imagine the AI Builder as a workspace… like having all your resources around you and an AI tutor in the background.”

That’s the shift: from learning before you build to learning while you build. We can’t wait to see what you create.

Why the Future of Learning Starts with Building

By

onlinefreecourse

-

September 28, 2026

0

Coding has always served two purposes: the intrinsic drive to build something, and the practical path to a lucrative career. Even the most passionate code aficionados don’t dream of variables or syntax — they want to make a website, a tool, a game. For years, the career upside was impossible to ignore. You could land a stable SWE job, bootstrap your own app, or join a buzzy startup as a first hire.

Generative AI flipped the script. AI now handles the repetitive tasks that used to define entry-level developer roles. At the same time, the barrier to entry for coding and building is lower than ever — you can spin up a working prototype with just an idea and a natural language prompt.

This shift hasn’t eliminated the desire to code, but it’s changed what and who coding is for. If you’re not learning to land a junior dev role, you’re learning to build the thing you’ve been imagining, to add a technical skill to your existing career, or to understand the tools you’re already using at work. And here’s the catch: those goals all require understanding your code, not just having code that works.

At Codecademy, all of these changes excite us about the future of learning to code. We’re introducing the AI Builder, a new project-based learning tool that flips the script by teaching you how to work with AI-generated code from the start. Our approach brings together the immediacy of modern AI tools and the rigor of real instructional design.

Why we created the AI Builder

AI’s speed and efficiency often come with a tradeoff; you can get working code immediately, but you don’t really know what it’s giving you or why it’s built a certain way. Developers use the term “vibe coding” to describe this phenomenon — it’s fast, fun, but shallow; great for demos, less great for long-term skill-building.

If your goal is to understand what you’re building, generic AI output alone won’t get you there. And the more you push these tools into real-world complexity, “the harder it is for them to give you exactly what you want,” says Zoe Bachman, Head of Learning at Codecademy.

With the AI Builder you get an education along with the AI output. In the workspace, you can toggle between two tabs: Build, where you work directly with a project and can modify and change code in real time; and Learn, where you get a personalized learning roadmap that’s based on your project.

“We pair the experience of having a working app with a learning path that allows you to reverse engineer how it’s built, so you can deeply understand it and modify it confidently,” Zoe says. We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development “vibe learning” — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Build first; learn continuously

With AI Builder, you start with what you want to do: build the thing in your head. Whether that’s a habit tracker, a portfolio site, or the seed of a bigger idea, you don’t need to have prior coding knowledge to learn and build with the AI Builder. In other words, there are no pre-requisites for creation.

You create a prototype by typing what you’d like to create in natural language. The AI chatbot will ask a few clarifying questions about your needs and overall goal before generating the project. Once the project is created, you can use the chat function to continue describing what you want. (You’re also welcome to go right into the code and start making changes if you already know your way around!)

“It was fun to build something so quickly and be able to see the code and a learning plan for it,” says Grace Krishna, a Code Crew member who beta tested the AI Builder.

When you need clarity on what’s going on behind the scenes in your code, or you hit a wall with AI, that’s a great time to flip over to the Learn tab.

We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development ‘vibe learning’ — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Your project becomes the curriculum

Rather than teaching concepts in the abstract and hoping learners translate them later, AI Builder removes that translation tax entirely. “We’re showing you specifically your code from your project and helping you understand it,” Zoe says.

To build that personalized curriculum, the AI Builder breaks your project’s code into clear milestones and tasks. For each task, it generates an interactive learning loop, which is an activity designed to help you form a mental model of what your specific code is doing.

These loops help you understand the logic behind each part of your project, so you can confidently apply the same thinking to other sections, or even future projects. This approach also ensures everything you learn is directly relevant to what you’re making — so you don’t have to guess when you’ll ever use this.

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A key misconception about AI‑assisted development is that it makes learning superficial. AI Builder challenges that by grounding the entire experience in learning science rather than simple code generation. Our entire system is intentionally designed for you to retain knowledge. So, while it might not feel like you’re taking a course, you’re absorbing key concepts just by interacting with AI-generated code.

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Our educational AI chatbot is designed to guide you toward an answer through an in-depth questioning approach that’s based on the Socratic method of teaching. Instead of spitting out shortcuts or answers like AI typically does, you get strategic nudges, hints, and questions that build durable mental models.

Research on AI in education shows that just providing an answer makes it harder for learners to retain the information on their own. Zoe compares the Socratic AI to “a personalized tutor, facilitating you acquiring more knowledge, so you’re not totally left on your own.” Our method encourages you to think critically so you really grasp the concepts and can continue to use them in the real world.

Learning loops with real instructional design

Behind the scenes, every learning loop in the Learn tab is built on proven frameworks like inductive learning and the 5E model, a popular STEM teaching framework that’s shorthand for engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate.

You’ll notice that the questions and exercises in the Learn tab feel different than the rest of our courses and paths, and that’s intentional. “The learning loops are designed very well — they get you there inductively,” Zoe says. They’re exploratory without being overwhelming, and evaluative without feeling like tests.

Negar Vahid, a beta tester for the AI Builder appreciated the AI’s interactive question format. “The question-based learning feels engaging, and the starter project it builds is simple but useful,” she says.

This structure ensures you don’t develop the wrong mental models — a known risk in fully constructivist or student-centered environments — while still giving you the freedom to explore.

Why learn when AI can build?

There are some projects that are well-suited for simply vibe coding, like making a personal HTML website or a single-use script to automate a one-time task. Tools like Lovable and v0 are suited exactly for these types of projects.

The longer your code needs to live, and the more complex your project becomes, the more you need to actually understand what you’re building. Joe Holmes, Codecademy Curriculum Developer in the AI and machine learning domain, uses the term “ignorance debt” to describe what happens when you don’t:

“It’s like tech debt squared. It’s much, much worse,” Joe says. “You don’t know what kind of code is coming out. You just are only looking at: Does this kind of generally appear to be what I asked for? You don’t know if there are security flaws. You don’t know if there are performance flaws. You don’t know if you’re leaking sensitive information. You don’t know how to fix anything.”

The tipping point comes down to two factors: complexity and time. If you’re developing software professionally, you’re legally responsible for the code you output. If you’re building something that will serve actual users, you need to be accountable for security, performance, and maintainability. And if your project will need updates or fixes over time (which most do) understanding your codebase becomes essential, not optional.

The good news? Learning doesn’t have to feel like eating your vegetables. “Kids hate veggies and broccoli because we don’t cook it well enough to make it tasty when we first introduce it to them,” says Nhi Pham, Codecademy Curriculum Developer. The same is true for teaching AI: “If you do it well, you’re inspiring people to have these very hygienic practices when working with AI,” she says.

That’s exactly what AI Builder is designed to do — make learning feel as immediate and rewarding as building, so you develop good habits from the start rather than building a lifelong aversion to understanding your own code.

Get started with the AI Builder

AI isn’t a replacement for learning, it’s a tool — and a powerful one when it comes to education. Our new AI Builder allows for “just‑in‑time learning that’s highly personalized,” Zoe says. Even the best teachers or bootcamps can’t deliver that for every learner, on every project, instantly. Perhaps the most exciting vision is how AI changes what a learning environment can be.

Zoe described it beautifully: “I imagine the AI Builder as a workspace… like having all your resources around you and an AI tutor in the background.”

That’s the shift: from learning before you build to learning while you build. We can’t wait to see what you create.

Why the Future of Learning Starts with Building

By

onlinefreecourse

-

September 28, 2026

0

Coding has always served two purposes: the intrinsic drive to build something, and the practical path to a lucrative career. Even the most passionate code aficionados don’t dream of variables or syntax — they want to make a website, a tool, a game. For years, the career upside was impossible to ignore. You could land a stable SWE job, bootstrap your own app, or join a buzzy startup as a first hire.

Generative AI flipped the script. AI now handles the repetitive tasks that used to define entry-level developer roles. At the same time, the barrier to entry for coding and building is lower than ever — you can spin up a working prototype with just an idea and a natural language prompt.

This shift hasn’t eliminated the desire to code, but it’s changed what and who coding is for. If you’re not learning to land a junior dev role, you’re learning to build the thing you’ve been imagining, to add a technical skill to your existing career, or to understand the tools you’re already using at work. And here’s the catch: those goals all require understanding your code, not just having code that works.

At Codecademy, all of these changes excite us about the future of learning to code. We’re introducing the AI Builder, a new project-based learning tool that flips the script by teaching you how to work with AI-generated code from the start. Our approach brings together the immediacy of modern AI tools and the rigor of real instructional design.

Why we created the AI Builder

AI’s speed and efficiency often come with a tradeoff; you can get working code immediately, but you don’t really know what it’s giving you or why it’s built a certain way. Developers use the term “vibe coding” to describe this phenomenon — it’s fast, fun, but shallow; great for demos, less great for long-term skill-building.

If your goal is to understand what you’re building, generic AI output alone won’t get you there. And the more you push these tools into real-world complexity, “the harder it is for them to give you exactly what you want,” says Zoe Bachman, Head of Learning at Codecademy.

With the AI Builder you get an education along with the AI output. In the workspace, you can toggle between two tabs: Build, where you work directly with a project and can modify and change code in real time; and Learn, where you get a personalized learning roadmap that’s based on your project.

“We pair the experience of having a working app with a learning path that allows you to reverse engineer how it’s built, so you can deeply understand it and modify it confidently,” Zoe says. We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development “vibe learning” — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Build first; learn continuously

With AI Builder, you start with what you want to do: build the thing in your head. Whether that’s a habit tracker, a portfolio site, or the seed of a bigger idea, you don’t need to have prior coding knowledge to learn and build with the AI Builder. In other words, there are no pre-requisites for creation.

You create a prototype by typing what you’d like to create in natural language. The AI chatbot will ask a few clarifying questions about your needs and overall goal before generating the project. Once the project is created, you can use the chat function to continue describing what you want. (You’re also welcome to go right into the code and start making changes if you already know your way around!)

“It was fun to build something so quickly and be able to see the code and a learning plan for it,” says Grace Krishna, a Code Crew member who beta tested the AI Builder.

When you need clarity on what’s going on behind the scenes in your code, or you hit a wall with AI, that’s a great time to flip over to the Learn tab.

We’re calling our hybrid approach to learning-driven development ‘vibe learning’ — it’s powered by AI guidance but rooted in learning science.

Your project becomes the curriculum

Rather than teaching concepts in the abstract and hoping learners translate them later, AI Builder removes that translation tax entirely. “We’re showing you specifically your code from your project and helping you understand it,” Zoe says.

To build that personalized curriculum, the AI Builder breaks your project’s code into clear milestones and tasks. For each task, it generates an interactive learning loop, which is an activity designed to help you form a mental model of what your specific code is doing.

These loops help you understand the logic behind each part of your project, so you can confidently apply the same thinking to other sections, or even future projects. This approach also ensures everything you learn is directly relevant to what you’re making — so you don’t have to guess when you’ll ever use this.

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A key misconception about AI‑assisted development is that it makes learning superficial. AI Builder challenges that by grounding the entire experience in learning science rather than simple code generation. Our entire system is intentionally designed for you to retain knowledge. So, while it might not feel like you’re taking a course, you’re absorbing key concepts just by interacting with AI-generated code.

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Our educational AI chatbot is designed to guide you toward an answer through an in-depth questioning approach that’s based on the Socratic method of teaching. Instead of spitting out shortcuts or answers like AI typically does, you get strategic nudges, hints, and questions that build durable mental models.

Research on AI in education shows that just providing an answer makes it harder for learners to retain the information on their own. Zoe compares the Socratic AI to “a personalized tutor, facilitating you acquiring more knowledge, so you’re not totally left on your own.” Our method encourages you to think critically so you really grasp the concepts and can continue to use them in the real world.

Learning loops with real instructional design

Behind the scenes, every learning loop in the Learn tab is built on proven frameworks like inductive learning and the 5E model, a popular STEM teaching framework that’s shorthand for engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate.

You’ll notice that the questions and exercises in the Learn tab feel different than the rest of our courses and paths, and that’s intentional. “The learning loops are designed very well — they get you there inductively,” Zoe says. They’re exploratory without being overwhelming, and evaluative without feeling like tests.

Negar Vahid, a beta tester for the AI Builder appreciated the AI’s interactive question format. “The question-based learning feels engaging, and the starter project it builds is simple but useful,” she says.

This structure ensures you don’t develop the wrong mental models — a known risk in fully constructivist or student-centered environments — while still giving you the freedom to explore.

Why learn when AI can build?

There are some projects that are well-suited for simply vibe coding, like making a personal HTML website or a single-use script to automate a one-time task. Tools like Lovable and v0 are suited exactly for these types of projects.

The longer your code needs to live, and the more complex your project becomes, the more you need to actually understand what you’re building. Joe Holmes, Codecademy Curriculum Developer in the AI and machine learning domain, uses the term “ignorance debt” to describe what happens when you don’t:

“It’s like tech debt squared. It’s much, much worse,” Joe says. “You don’t know what kind of code is coming out. You just are only looking at: Does this kind of generally appear to be what I asked for? You don’t know if there are security flaws. You don’t know if there are performance flaws. You don’t know if you’re leaking sensitive information. You don’t know how to fix anything.”

The tipping point comes down to two factors: complexity and time. If you’re developing software professionally, you’re legally responsible for the code you output. If you’re building something that will serve actual users, you need to be accountable for security, performance, and maintainability. And if your project will need updates or fixes over time (which most do) understanding your codebase becomes essential, not optional.

The good news? Learning doesn’t have to feel like eating your vegetables. “Kids hate veggies and broccoli because we don’t cook it well enough to make it tasty when we first introduce it to them,” says Nhi Pham, Codecademy Curriculum Developer. The same is true for teaching AI: “If you do it well, you’re inspiring people to have these very hygienic practices when working with AI,” she says.

That’s exactly what AI Builder is designed to do — make learning feel as immediate and rewarding as building, so you develop good habits from the start rather than building a lifelong aversion to understanding your own code.

Get started with the AI Builder

AI isn’t a replacement for learning, it’s a tool — and a powerful one when it comes to education. Our new AI Builder allows for “just‑in‑time learning that’s highly personalized,” Zoe says. Even the best teachers or bootcamps can’t deliver that for every learner, on every project, instantly. Perhaps the most exciting vision is how AI changes what a learning environment can be.

Zoe described it beautifully: “I imagine the AI Builder as a workspace… like having all your resources around you and an AI tutor in the background.”

That’s the shift: from learning before you build to learning while you build. We can’t wait to see what you create.

Why we created the AI Builder

Build first; learn continuously

Your project becomes the curriculum

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Learning loops with real instructional design

Why learn when AI can build?

Get started with the AI Builder

Why we created the AI Builder

Build first; learn continuously

Your project becomes the curriculum

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Learning loops with real instructional design

Why learn when AI can build?

Get started with the AI Builder

Why we created the AI Builder

Build first; learn continuously

Your project becomes the curriculum

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Learning loops with real instructional design

Why learn when AI can build?

Get started with the AI Builder

Why we created the AI Builder

Build first; learn continuously

Your project becomes the curriculum

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Learning loops with real instructional design

Why learn when AI can build?

Get started with the AI Builder

Why we created the AI Builder

Build first; learn continuously

Your project becomes the curriculum

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Learning loops with real instructional design

Why learn when AI can build?

Get started with the AI Builder

Why we created the AI Builder

Build first; learn continuously

Your project becomes the curriculum

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Learning loops with real instructional design

Why learn when AI can build?

Get started with the AI Builder

Why we created the AI Builder

Build first; learn continuously

Your project becomes the curriculum

Why this is vibe learning (not vibe coding)

A Socratic AI, not an answer-spitting chatbot

Learning loops with real instructional design

Why learn when AI can build?

Get started with the AI Builder

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