Skip to content

What are blocks?

What blocks are, the full set you can add to a screen, and how you arrange them.

A block is a single piece of content on a screen: a heading, an image, a table, an accordion, a quiz question. You build each screen by adding blocks and arranging them on a six column grid, rather than choosing a screen type and fitting your content into it. Any block can sit on any screen, so one screen can carry an explanation, an interactive element and a knowledge check together.

How is this different from the Classic builder?

In the Classic builder, the screen type decided everything. If you wanted an accordion you chose the accordion screen, and that screen was an accordion and nothing else. Your content had to fit the shape of the type you picked.

Blocks invert that. You start with a screen and put whatever the content needs on it. An accordion is now one element you can place next to a paragraph, an image and a question, at whatever width you want.

What blocks can I use?

Text and structure

  • Heading: the screen title and any sub-headings within the screen, with proper heading levels.
  • Paragraph: body text, including bulleted and numbered lists, bold, italics and links.
  • Table: rows and columns with a proper header row, for comparisons, specifications and reference data.
  • Button: a call to action on the screen.

Media

  • Image: uploaded, chosen from your image library, or from a URL, with alt text and an optional caption.
  • Video: uploaded or embedded, set to landscape or portrait, with captions available if video is hosted on YouTube or Vimeo. Portrait suits footage shot on a phone or filmed for social, so vertical video sits in a vertical frame rather than being letterboxed into a wide one.
  • Audio: an inline player for an uploaded audio file, or generated narration.
  • Slideshow: a set of images a learner moves through.

Interactive

  • Accordion: expandable sections with a title and content each, good for FAQs and reference material.
  • Checklist: checkable items, good for steps and procedures.
  • Process: sequential steps, each with its own title and content.
  • Flashcards: flip cards with a front and a back.

Hotspot is not currently available as a block in the new builder. Hotspot screens in courses you have already built in Classic are unaffected and keep working as they do today.

Documents and embeds

  • Document: an embedded document a learner can read on the screen.
  • Embed: external content or an iframe, for anything that lives on another site.

Questions

Question blocks come in seven types: multiple choice, multiple response, true or false, short answer, fill in the blank, sequence, and matching.

How do I arrange blocks on a screen?

Screens use a six column grid. You place a block, set how many columns wide it should be (a minimum of two), and drag it where you want it. Blocks can sit side by side or stack down the screen.

The grid is what keeps courses looking designed rather than assembled. You are choosing where things go within a structure, not placing elements freely on a blank canvas, so spacing and alignment stay consistent across every screen in the course.

Do I have to build every screen from scratch?

No. Templates give you a pre-arranged set of blocks as a starting point, and you can change anything afterwards. Choose Start with a template when you add a screen and you can browse them grouped by purpose:

  • Intro: title only, title and subtitle, title with a full image, banner and title.
  • Content: text, text and image, three columns, text and two images, title and three images, full image, full video, text and video, full slideshow, text and slideshow.
  • Interactive: checklist, accordion, numbered list, acronym.

You can add several screens at once from the template picker rather than one at a time.

How do blocks work on mobile?

Every course adapts to smaller screens automatically, and you can control how. Switch to the mobile view in the builder and you can:

  • Reorder blocks to change how they stack on a narrow screen, which may not be the order that makes sense on a wide one.
  • Hide a block from mobile entirely, so a wide table or a decorative image does not have to squeeze onto a phone.

You cannot edit block content in the mobile view. It is for reordering and visibility only, so the words stay the same everywhere.

How does assessment work with blocks?

There are two different things here, and picking the right one matters:

  • A knowledge check is a question block on an ordinary screen, usually with a heading above it. Use it to check understanding as you go. It is not scored.
  • A scored quiz is its own kind of screen. It opens with a cover, presents one question at a time to the learner, and ends with a results screen. Use it for a test or final assessment.

A scored quiz has three settings: turn scoring on or off, make short answers case sensitive, and shuffle the question order so each learner gets the questions in a different sequence.

While you are building, you see all the questions stacked down the page so you can reorder them. Learners see one at a time.

What do blocks mean for accessibility?

Two things are built in rather than left to you:

  • Every screen needs a heading block as its first block. This is the screen title, and it gives assistive technology the structure it relies on to navigate. The builder enforces this.
  • You control the reading order. You can set the order blocks are read in by screen readers, narration and keyboard navigation, which matters when the visual arrangement does not match the order things should be read.

Tables use proper header rows, and list content uses list-shaped blocks such as checklists and accordions rather than bullets typed into a paragraph, so the underlying structure is real rather than visual.

Frequently asked questions

Can any block go on any screen?

Yes, for ordinary screens. Mix content, media, interactive elements and a question on the same screen as the content needs. Scored quiz screens are the exception: they hold question blocks only.

Can I put a question on a normal screen?

Yes. A question block on an ordinary screen is how you build a knowledge check, and it does not need to be part of a quiz.

Can I change a block into a different type?

You can swap blocks out and rearrange them freely while you build. Questions are the exception worth knowing about: you can change a question from one type to another, for example from short answer to multiple choice, without rebuilding the screen around it.