Authoring tools routinely make the student experience worse.
Students want the shortest path to understanding. Educators need enough control to structure a course properly.
Give educators control without showing consequences and the student inherits whatever they guessed at.
Show the consequence while authoring
If an educator can see the student view as they build, most of the guesswork disappears.
Two clean surfaces, joined by a live preview.
Every structural choice an educator makes previews as the student will actually see it.
Live student preview
Authoring shows its output continuously.
The educator never has to imagine the result, which removed most of the structural mistakes the previous tool produced.
Separate surfaces, shared system
Different interfaces, one design language.
The two products look related and behave differently, which is correct — they are used by different people for opposite reasons.
Educators can see what they are making.
And the student experience stays uncluttered regardless of how the course was assembled.