Tools n Tuts User Guide

Tools n Tuts is an adaptable, AI-powered Learning Impact platform for any environment — schools, training providers, workplaces, professional CPD and self-paced academies. This guide is a click-by-click walkthrough for every role, followed by how the platform works.

# Create your account

1. Open /onboarding and choose your card — As a Learner, As a Tutor or As an Org — then click Let's go!.
2. On Create account, fill your details and click Create account (or Sign up with Google).
3. Invited by an admin? Open your invite link and set a password instead.
4. Learners then complete the How do you learn best? quiz (12 questions); everyone else lands in the workspace.

# The two shells

Your role decides which front-end you see:

• Creator workspace — sidebar + top bar. Authoring, oversight and administration: Courses, AI Studio, Users, Compliance, Insights, Assessments, At-risk, Pathways, Tenant branding.
• Learner shell — a clean experience under /my-learning, /browse and /learn. The sidebar is hidden; the player and quiz/game modes go full-screen.

# Roles at a glance

Tools n Tuts has seven roles. Click one to jump to its step-by-step guide. Platform Super Admin is internal to Xepho and isn't assignable from a tenant.

# Learner

Access learning, complete activities, submit evidence, and track your own progress and mastery over time.

My LearningBrowseMy skillsMy portfolioPathways

# Sign up & set your learning style

1. Create your account

   • Open /onboarding and on the ‘As a Learner’ card click Let's go!.
   • On Create account, fill First Name, Last Name, Work Email and Password (8+ chars, an uppercase, a number, a special character).
   • Click Create account — or use Sign up with Google.
   • Invited by an admin? Open your invite link and set a password instead.

2. Set your learning style (VARK)

   • You arrive at How do you learn best? — click Start.
   • Answer all 12 questions: pick the option that fits and click Continue (use Previous to go back).
   • On question 12 click Submit, then on the results card click Go to Dashboard.
   • Retake any time at /onboarding/vark.

# Find & enrol in a course

1. Browse the catalogue

   • On /my-learning use Continue learning, My courses or Recommended for you.
   • For something new click Explore courses (or open /browse).
   • Search with Search courses…; sort by Newest / Most popular / Price / A–Z; filter by category, level and price.

2. Enrol

   • Click a course card to open /course/[id] and review the Course content accordion and About this course.
   • In the right-hand card click Enroll & start (free) or Buy now (paid → Stripe Checkout).
   • Once enrolled the button reads Go to course and ✓ You're enrolled appears.

# Learn

1. Open the immersive player

   • You enter /learn/[courseId]; the left Course content rail lists sections and lessons (✓ done · ▶ current · ○ to do).
   • Toggle the rail with the menu button on mobile; click ✕ Exit to leave.

2. Pick your lens & read materials

   • Under the lesson title, click a tab — Visual, Auditory, Reading or Kinesthetic — to view that format.
   • Open the Materials tab and click a file (or Preview) to view it in-page (dialog on desktop, drawer on mobile) — image, audio, video or PDF.

3. Complete the lesson

   • At the bottom click Complete & continue (or Complete course on the last lesson).
   • Move with ← Previous and Next ›. Completing bumps your streak and progress.

# Practise (quizzes & games)

1. Open a knowledge check

   • Each section has a practice item (gamepad icon) — open it for the full-screen play surface.
   • Under PLAY IT YOUR WAY choose Classic (graded) or a game: Flashcards, Concept Rush, Memory Match, Quiz Blitz or Heptris.

2. Play Classic

   • Answer each Question X of N; jump via the number grid or Next ›.
   • Click 🏆 Submit quiz to finish.
   • If you skipped questions, the Submit anyway? dialog offers Keep answering or Submit incomplete.

# Track, prove & finish

1. Track your mastery

   • Open /skills: your mastery ring, band split, Due for review (spaced repetition) and Focus areas.
   • Click Review on any item to revisit the material.

2. Build your portfolio

   • On /portfolio click Add evidence.
   • Set a Title, choose Type (Link or Written reflection), optionally pick a Course and Competency, then click Submit.
   • Track each item (Under review / Passed / Referred); use Withdraw while pending or referred.

3. Follow a pathway & certify

   • On /pathways open a published programme and click Enrol in programme.
   • On the final lesson the Course complete! 🎉 screen appears — click View certificate.
   • Download a transcript any time from /api/transcripts/export.

# Accessibility

1. Set your accommodations

   • In /settings turn on the dyslexia-friendly font, set text size (small → XL), and enable text-to-speech.
   • Pick a theme (light / dark / system). These apply across the whole app.

# Tutor

Deliver structured learning within a school, organisation or cohort, or private/commercial training — create your own courses, sessions and learner groups, manage lessons, assign content, monitor class progress, intervene, and personalise materials with AI.

CoursesAt-risk learnersAssessmentsCreate a courseAI StudioLive sessionsPathwaysEarnings

# Author & adapt

1. Open the workspace & edit a course

   • Your role unlocks the sidebar workspace automatically — go to /courses.
   • Open a course to reach its editor; click Add module, then Add lesson, and edit the lesson title and content (auto-saves on blur).

2. Add a knowledge check

   • In a module click Add quiz, then Add question.
   • Choose a type — Multiple choice, True/false or Descriptive — add options and mark the correct answer.
   • In the quiz's own settings, pick which extra practice formats learners can switch to (Flashcards, Concept Rush, Memory Match, Quiz Blitz, Heptris) — leave none picked and only graded Classic mode shows.

3. Adapt per learning style

   • In the lesson editor use the Add VARK content buttons: Generate visual, Generate auditory, Generate video, Generate kinesthetic.
   • Click Publish course when ready, then assign it to a cohort or learners.

# Monitor & intervene

1. Watch your class

   • Open /at-risk — learners are ranked High / Medium / Low.
   • Filter with the signal tabs (All / Overdue / Weak mastery / Not started) and the search box.

2. Review & act

   • Open /assessments to see submissions in the Queue and leave feedback (formal sign-off needs Assessor rights).
   • On an at-risk row click Open (their profile) or the mail icon to message them; reassign or adapt their content.

# Create & build a course

1. Start the wizard

   • Go to /courses/create — a resumable, 4-step wizard: Method → Design → Content → Publish. It autosaves as you go, so Save as draft and come back any time — the chooser offers a Resume your draft card.
   • On Method pick how to start: Describe course idea (AI writes a full outline from a short brief), Set up course manually, or Upload your curriculum (AI drafts an outline from an uploaded doc/PDF/spreadsheet).
   • Even Set up course manually still offers its own Create with AI button alongside Create manually — "manual" means you're not forced through the AI brief, not that AI is unavailable.

2. Build it out

   • Design and Content converge on the same Course Syllabus board regardless of which Method you picked — add/reorder modules and lessons here.
   • Once you reach the editor (Publish step), every lesson still has per-tab AI actions — Regenerate with AI, Repolish with AI, Generate article — plus AI cover-image and quiz generation, all available whenever you want them, not just at creation.
   • Set price/level/category via the settings gear; upload files with Upload materials; refresh the banner with Regenerate banner.
   • Click Publish course when ready.

# Generate content in AI Studio

1. Course content

   • Lesson → Generate outline (then Save as new course).
   • Notes → Generate notes; Flashcards → Generate deck (then Save deck / Export CSV / Export JSON); VARK convert.

2. Media studio & capture

   • Slides → Generate premium deck (+ .pptx); Audio (Narration / Podcast) → Generate audio.
   • Video → Generate video (optional presenter image); Image → Generate image.
   • Voice → Record, then summarise / pull action items / convert to notes.

# Sessions, pathways & earnings

1. Schedule sessions & availability

   • At /sessions click Schedule session (Course, Session title, Starts at, Duration → Schedule session).
   • At /tutor/availability use Add a window or Apply Mon-Fri 9-5.

2. Build a pathway

   • On /pathways click New programme, then Edit to add courses (course picker → Add).
   • Reorder with ↑/↓, tick Sequential and Published, then Save programme.

3. Mark tasks & track

   • Review evidence in /assessments (Pass / Refer back / Not met).
   • Watch learners at /at-risk; review payouts at /settings/earnings.

# Assessor

Evaluate competency, mastery and evidence against defined criteria — review submissions, grade, and record competency decisions.

AssessmentsAt-risk learners

# Grade evidence

1. Open the queue

   • Go to /assessments. The Queue tab lists evidence awaiting review; Reviewed shows your history.
   • Use the search box to find by learner, title or competency.

2. Review a submission

   • Read the learner, course and linked competency chip.
   • Click Open evidence to view a link, or read the written reflection inline.

3. Record your verdict

   • Type optional feedback, then click Pass, Refer back (resubmission) or Not met.
   • A Pass tied to a competency automatically credits the learner's mastery (flows into their /skills and your /insights).

# Guardian

Support a linked learner’s progress, especially in school or child-learning contexts — a safeguarding-friendly, read-only view.

My learners

# View your learner

1. Get linked

   • Ask your organisation admin to link you: they open the learner at /users/[id], find the Guardians card, enter your email and click Link.
   • You must already have a Tools n Tuts account.

2. Open ‘My learners’

   • Go to /learners. The top strip shows learners supported, average progress, certificates and who needs a nudge.
   • Each card shows a progress ring, an engagement badge (Active / Quiet lately / Needs encouragement), what they're currently learning, certificates and support needs.

# Compliance Lead

Oversee workforce learning, mandatory training, compliance and impact — assign, monitor risk and overdue learning, and report.

ComplianceInsightsAt-risk learners

# Assign mandatory training

1. Create an assignment

   • Go to /compliance and click Assign training.
   • Pick a Course and a Cohort, set an optional Due date and Renew every (months), keep Mandatory ticked.
   • Click Assign — everyone in the cohort is auto-enrolled. (No cohort yet? Create one under Admin → Cohorts first.)

# Monitor, report & renew

1. Read the dashboard

   • The hero ring is your compliance %, with Completed / Overdue / In progress / Not started cards.
   • The By course panel ranks courses by completion; the table lists assignments (overdue first).
   • Use the search box and status filter; click Export for a CSV report.

2. Catch slipping learners

   • Open /at-risk — learners ranked High / Medium / Low by overdue training, weak mastery and stalled progress.
   • Filter, search, then open a profile or email a learner to intervene.

3. Read the impact dashboard

   • Go to /insights: headline metrics, an engagement funnel, a mastery gauge, and compliance / evidence / pathways rollups.
   • Revenue is deliberately excluded — that's admin-only.
   • Assignments with a renewal window flip back to Overdue automatically when a certificate ages out.

# Organisation Admin

Manage tenant-level administration for a school, company or provider — users, roles, cohorts, branding, catalogue and integrations.

UsersTenant brandingCohortsReports

# Users, roles & groups

1. Add a user & assign a role

   • Go to /users and click Add User.
   • Fill Full Name and Email Address, then pick a Role — Organisation Admin, Compliance Lead, Tutor, Assessor, Guardian, Learner, User.
   • Click Add User — they receive an email invite to set a password.

2. Bulk-import or invite

   • Click Import Users to upload a CSV.
   • Or at /admin/invites, paste emails (or upload a CSV) into New batch, choose Assign role, and click Send invites (one-time, expire in 30 days).

3. Create cohorts / departments

   • At /admin/cohorts click New cohort (Name, Description, optional Linked course, Start/End → Create).
   • Then Manage learners → paste emails → Add learners (auto-enrolled in the linked course).

# Brand your tenant

1. Open the Organisation CMS

   • On /admin/tenant edit on the left, preview on the right.
   • Set Identity (name, slug, tagline) and Branding (logo, cover, primary & secondary colour).

2. Advanced branding

   • Appearance: Let each user choose / Always light / Always dark.
   • Upload a Dark-mode logo and Favicon; set a Font family and Font stylesheet URL.
   • Add Content (About, Highlights, FAQ) and Contact & domain, then click Save & Publish.

# Link, report & oversee

1. Link guardians

   • Open a learner at /users/[id], find the Guardians card.
   • Enter the guardian's email and click Link — they get the Guardian view on /learners.

2. Report & oversee

   • /admin/reports — operational analytics incl. revenue (with Export CSV).
   • /insights — learning impact; /compliance — mandatory training.
   • /admin (Admin Command) — live stats, content management and system health.

# Platform Super Admin

Xepho-level platform governance and support — manage tenants, platform settings, monitoring and audits. (Internal Xepho role.)

Admin commandMonitoringReports

# Govern & monitor

1. Admin Command

   • Go to /admin. Every capability is unlocked platform-wide.
   • Review the stats grid, the Content Management table and the System Health sidebar; click Run Manual Scan for a security audit.

2. Monitor & report

   • Open /admin/monitoring for live service status, response times and an Incident log.
   • Set the polling cadence (10s / 30s / 60s / 120s) or Pause; status changes raise notifications and can fire a webhook.
   • Use /admin/reports for platform-wide analytics and Export CSV.

# Quizzes & game modes

Every knowledge check offers Classic (graded — pass score, attempt caps, optional timer). A tutor can also switch on any of five practice formats per quiz — Flashcards, Concept Rush, Memory Match, Quiz Blitz, and Heptris (an arcade rotate-the-core game) — a quiz with none enabled shows Classic only. Play runs full-screen and the board fills the visible height. Classic attempts feed the mastery engine — each answered question updates your proficiency for that topic.

# Kinesthetic activities

Kinesthetic is entirely AI-generated — there's no manual-authoring path, so a tenant with AI turned off sees none at all. A tutor asks for a recommendation (grounded in the lesson's own reading content), enables up to two types per lesson, generates each one, then explicitly publishes it — learners only ever see published activities, never a work-in-progress draft. Current types include Micro-Challenge, Sort/Classify, Sequence/Order, Scenario Decision, Reflection Task, Role-play, Simulation, Build Task, Case Review, CAD Assembly and Code Playground — real 3D geometry (OpenCascade/three.js) for Build Task and CAD Assembly, real server-side execution against hidden tests for Code Playground. When a lesson has an enabled kinesthetic activity, Complete & continue is replaced by Do kinesthetic to continue until it's finished. Every activity ends with a short written justification an AI coach grades against the lesson content (never blocking completion if the AI is briefly unavailable); a separate always-on AI Coach chat panel gives hints — never the answer — while you work.

# Assignments

Beyond quizzes, a tutor can attach a free-form assignment to a lesson. Learners submit from /learn/[courseId]/assignments — written (a full rich-text editor, not a plain text box) or a link to external work — and see status (Not submitted / Awaiting grade / graded score) and instructor feedback once reviewed. Tutors grade from the course's own Assignments tab: score out of the assignment's max points plus written feedback.

# Mastery & spaced repetition

Tools n Tuts models competencies and tracks each learner's mastery as a cumulative score (correct ÷ answered) — proficiency over time, not one quiz. On /skills: an overall ring, band split (Mastered ≥80 · Proficient 60–79 · Developing 40–59 · Emerging <40), Due for review (spaced repetition: 1/3/7/14/30 days), and Focus areas. A passed piece of portfolio evidence also credits mastery.

Open Mastery & spaced repetition →

# Pathways & prerequisites

A pathway is an ordered set of courses. Authors build one at /pathways → New programme → Edit (add courses, reorder, toggle Sequential and Published) → Save programme. A sequential pathway locks each course until the previous is certified; enrolling auto-enrols the learner in the first course and unlocks the next as they progress.

Open Pathways & prerequisites →

# Evidence & assessment

Beyond quizzes, learners submit evidence of competence on /portfolio. Assessors review it in the /assessments queue and record Pass, Refer back, or Not met with feedback. A pass credits the learner's competency mastery.

Open Evidence & assessment →

# Compliance & mandatory training

Managers assign mandatory training to cohorts on /compliance; learners are auto-enrolled and see it as ‘Required training’ on their home. Completion is derived from the course certificate; a renewal window flips an assignment back to ‘overdue’ when the certificate ages out. The dashboard shows per-learner status, a compliance %, per-course breakdowns and a CSV export.

Open Compliance & mandatory training →

# AI Studio

/aistudio groups its generators: Course content (Lesson, Notes, Flashcards, VARK convert), Media studio (Slides + .pptx, Audio with a Narration/Podcast toggle, Video with an optional presenter image, Image), and Capture (Voice). A per-modality model picker and a live credits badge keep you in control.

Open AI Studio →

# Certificates & transcripts

Completing a course auto-issues a PDF certificate stamped with your tenant's logo and colour, with a public verification code at /certificates/[code]. Download a full PDF transcript from /api/transcripts/export.

# Accessibility & neurodiversity

In /settings each learner can enable a dyslexia-friendly font, change text size (small → XL), and toggle text-to-speech. These apply across the entire app — including the immersive learner shell — and surface to a Parent/Guardian as ‘support needs’.

Open Accessibility & neurodiversity →

# Theming & multi-tenancy

Each organisation gets a tenant with its own subdomain (e.g. acme.xepho.io). On /admin/tenant set the logo, colours, cover and contact, plus Advanced: a dark-mode logo, favicon, custom web font, and a dark-mode policy. The whole app reskins to the brand via SSR CSS-variable injection.

# Billing, plans & credits

Plans are Freemium (free), Premium, Business and Enterprise (plus a separate per-seat Team plan), each granting a different monthly AI credit allowance to your own personal wallet — see /pricing to compare, and the credit badge in the top bar for your live balance (you'll get a low-balance notice at 20%/10%/5% remaining). /settings/billing lists invoices, your credit history, and opens the Stripe Billing Portal to manage your subscription. If you sell paid courses, connecting Stripe (/settings/payouts) pays you directly for every sale minus a platform fee — courses you haven't opted into reselling on the marketplace are yours; a course explicitly opted into marketplace resale routes 100% of that sale to the platform instead.

Open Billing, plans & credits →

# Course materials, reading formats & previews

A lesson's Reading area has three independent format tabs — Text (the authored/AI content itself), Slides, and Document (any file a tutor uploaded, shown inline — a PDF/image renders directly, an Office file offers a download — with its own Download transcript as a plain .txt file). Uploading a document never overwrites the Text tab; the two are kept deliberately separate. Elsewhere, both the editor and the learner player render an in-page preview — a dialog on desktop, a drawer on mobile — for images, audio, video and PDFs, capped to the viewport so media never overflows the screen.

# Your data & account

In /settings, choose which events email you (per-item toggles, e.g. course enrolled, quiz completed, assignment graded — the in-app bell always fires regardless). The Danger Zone tab lets a learner schedule their own account and every piece of its data for permanent deletion — it happens automatically 14 days later unless you cancel first, with an email either way. (Tutor/admin accounts can't self-delete here, since closing one cascades to every course they authored — contact your organisation admin instead.)

Open Your data & account →

# Developer API

Endpoints accept/return JSON, authenticate via the session cookie, and are tenant-scoped automatically.

# Glossary

• VARK — a learning-preference model: Visual, Auditory, Reading/writing, Kinesthetic.
• Competency — a discrete topic/concept that mastery is measured against.
• Mastery — cumulative proficiency for a competency (correct ÷ answered), tracked over time.
• Pathway — an ordered programme of courses, optionally with prerequisite gating.
• Cohort — a named group of learners for bulk enrol/assignment.
• Tenant — an organisation's isolated space with its own subdomain, branding and users.
• Evidence — learner-submitted proof of competence reviewed by an Assessor.
• Credits — the unit spent on AI generation.

# Support

Check the Help Center for FAQs, or email hello@xepho.io.