Smart LMS: building a course with lessons, a quiz and an assignment

Smart LMS is SmartGT's new learning platform. Its functional model will be familiar to anyone who has worked with Tutor LMS: courses, sections, lessons and quizzes, student enrolment, progress, a certificate. The main difference from the usual learning systems lies elsewhere: one installation runs several learning platforms from a single admin panel, and each of them lives in its own brand and on its own domain. For a training centre with several schools, or for a company that teaches both its staff and its customers, that means one system instead of three.

Below is a step-by-step guide worked through end to end: we create a platform called «Builder's Academy», build a four-lesson course in it, configure a quiz and an assignment, enrol a student and sell the course with a promo code. The platform is currently in its first release; at the end there is an honest list of what it does not have yet.

Step 1. Create a platform

1. The admin panel opens the platform centre with summary figures for each. Press «New platform».
2. Set the name («Builder's Academy»), a short name for the address (academy) and the accent colour — it tints the buttons and links of this platform's public side. There are preset colours and a «Custom colour» option.
3. The platform is immediately available at …/p/academy. Your own domain (academy.example.com) goes into the platform's «Settings»; after that it opens there and the internal links become short, without the prefix.

The platform's «Settings» hold the domain, the brand, the state (whether it is open to visitors) and the module switches. A new platform enables the standard modules explicitly: if something is not visible, look here first.

The platform's side menu: «Overview», «Courses», «Students», «Marking», «Orders», «Coupons», «Settings». We will go through it in order.

Step 2. The course and its syllabus

1. «Courses» → a new course: description, cover (an image address), level, price and state — draft or published.
2. In the course syllabus add a section («Section title»), and lessons inside it. For each: «Lesson title», «Lesson type», «Duration, minutes».
3. There are five lesson types: text («Lesson content»), video («Video link» — YouTube, Vimeo or your own hosting), file, quiz and assignment. The last two get an editor of their own once created.

The order of sections and lessons follows the order in which you add them — dragging is not in the first release yet, so it is easier to plan the syllabus on paper and enter it in order.

Our example: a «Basics» section with a text lesson «Tools and materials» (12 min), a video lesson «Preparing the substrate» (18 min), a quiz «Test yourself» and an assignment «Laying plan».

Step 3. The quiz: eight question types and honest scoring

Open the quiz lesson. At the top are the «Quiz settings», below them the questions.

Quiz settings

• «Pass mark, %» — the threshold above which an attempt counts as passed.
• «Time limit, min» and «Attempts» — how long and how many times.
• «Questions from the list» — a draw from a pool: you enter, say, thirty questions and each student gets ten. The set is fixed by the attempt, so a retake brings different questions and one quiz cannot be «passed on the single easiest one».
• Penalty for a wrong answer — «in marks» or «as a % of the question's weight».
• «What the student sees after an attempt» — «The final percentage only» or «A review: correct answers and explanations».

Question types

One correct answer, several correct answers, true/false, short answer, long answer, gaps in a text, matching pairs, ordering. An explanation can be added to any question — the student sees it in the review.

How marks are calculated

• A skipped question scores zero, with no penalty. Not knowing is not punished more harshly than being wrong; otherwise it would pay not to answer at all.
• Everything correct — the question's full weight.
• Partly correct — a fraction of the weight minus the penalty, but only where «nearly right» exists at all: several correct answers, matching, ordering, gaps. A short answer or a single choice is either right or wrong.
• «Select everything» in a multiple-correct question does not earn full marks: the surplus options reduce the fraction.
• An individual question's mark can go negative because of the penalty; the attempt's total never does.
• A long answer is not scored automatically: the attempt enters the «awaiting marking» state, the lesson does not close, and the teacher awards the marks.

A separate word on fairness: the correct answers never reach the student's browser in any form — checking happens on the server. For matching questions the right-hand parts are served as a separate, shuffled list. Peeking at the answers in the page source is impossible.

Step 4. Assignments and marking

An assignment lesson has its own editor: the brief, the maximum and pass marks, the deadline and the number of submissions allowed. The student submits text with links — to a document, a video, photos of the work. In our example that is a tile-laying plan, posted as a link to a file.

Everything that needs a human collects in the «Marking» section: submitted assignments and long answers from quizzes. The teacher awards a mark and writes a comment — the student sees them in the player, and the lesson closes.

Step 5. Students, enrolment and progress

• «Students» → add a person with a role: student or teacher. Enrolment on a course happens there too, or through a purchase.
• The student sees the course in the player: the syllabus on the left with completion marks, the text, video or file in the centre, and «mark as completed» at the bottom. The quiz and the assignment open at their place in the syllabus.
• «My learning» shows progress on each course and the certificate number once a course is completed.
• Every student's progress across courses is visible to the administrator too, in the student's record.

Step 6. Selling: price, coupon, order

1. The price is set on the course. A free course has a price of zero and enrols immediately.
2. A coupon. «Coupons» → new: the code (START2026, say), a discount as a percentage or an amount, for all courses or for selected ones, a minimum order amount, limits — overall and per person — and a validity window.
3. The purchase. On the course page the student presses «Buy», enters the promo code and receives a numbered order.
4. Confirmation. «Orders» → a filterable list: confirm payment, cancel, refund. Above it, a summary of what has been paid and what is expected.

Rules built into the arithmetic that are worth knowing when you set up a coupon: a discount is never larger than what it applies to (a coupon for 500 UAH on a course costing 300 UAH gives no change); an expired coupon says «expired» rather than «the amount is too low»; the threshold is counted on the whole order while the discount applies only to the courses the coupon covers. And the main one: a refund closes access but does not erase progress. A student who buys the course again carries on from the same place.

What is not in the first release yet

• Online payment. Payment is confirmed by an administrator by hand, against the order number. We will connect a payment gateway as a separate step, and we do not pretend it is already there.
• Dragging sections and lessons; editing a question once created (for now you can only add or delete one).
• A timer on the quiz screen: the time limit is configurable but works as an announcement rather than a constraint for now.
• A visual editor for a lesson (content is plain text), a media library and file uploads — covers and videos are given by address.
• Emails to students, a printable certificate page, course bundles and subscriptions.

We release the platform deliberately with a complete core and without «nearly finished» features: better that the quiz scores honestly and a person confirms the payment than the other way round.

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Smart LMS is in a closed launch at the moment — we deploy the first platforms for clients by arrangement, together with migrating existing courses. If you have courses and students outgrowing your current system, write to us and we will show it on your own material.