Interactive courses for colleges

Your module’s slides, rebuilt as things students can move.

Send us the deck you teach a module from. We turn each idea into a small working model: the student drags, types or clicks, and the idea responds. Same syllabus, same order, same facts.

lecture slide → TwiddleLab scene
Volta · Act 1 · Voltage: the pushtry it ↓
5 VA0.25 A
current through the bulb
strong push → fast current
“Voltage doesn’t flow, it pushes. More volts means a harder shove, so more electrons move each second.”

This is a real scene from Volta, our electronics course. Drag the voltage. The electrons, their speed, the bulb, the meter and the reading all follow it.

A slide tells students what happens. A scene lets them make it happen.

Here is the same idea twice, from a 6th-semester Cyber Security module.

The slide
SQL Injection
  • Attacker inserts malicious SQL statements into an input field
  • Application passes the input to the database without validation
  • Can be used to read, modify or delete data
  • Prevention: input validation, parameterised queries

Accurate, and easy to memorise for the exam. But the student never sees a quote mark turn their text into code, so the second bullet stays abstract.

The scene we build from it
Bastion · Part 4 · SQL injection

Asha, a student logs in to check her marks. She types her name.

1someone logs in to the student portal
A student’s hands typing on a laptop
Asha
portal.uni.edu/login
2the web server pastes the name into its SQL
web server
SELECT * FROM users WHERE name = 'name'
3the database runs whatever it's handed
An open hard drive: the database's data lives on its platter
database
aasha
asha@uni.edu
rravi
ravi@uni.edu
oo'brien
obrien@uni.edu
aadmin
root@uni.edu
try:
“A form box should only ever hold words. When the program pastes those words straight into its code, the attacker gets to write the code.”
Photos via Wikimedia Commons: hard drive (public domain), typing hands (public domain), hooded figure by edwinchuen (CC BY 2.0, cropped and recoloured).

Watch Asha log in, then watch the attacker use the same box. Then switch on the fix and let them try again. Every bullet on the slide is in here, including the prevention.

Every idea gets something to move.

Four questions students get asked in exams. Pick one and answer it with your hands.

sample scene · PhysicsFire the cannon faster.
zoom 1.6×
Falls back to the ground 3,321 km away.
“An orbit is just falling and missing. Throw something fast enough and the Earth curves away beneath it before it lands.”

How it works

  1. 01

    You send us the module.

    The slides you teach from, the syllabus, and the order you cover things in. Slides that are only a diagram or a figure count too. We transcribe those as well, so nothing on the syllabus goes missing.

  2. 02

    We build it scene by scene, in your order.

    Each idea gets one scene. It says plainly what the thing is, shows it working, gives a real example, then hands the student something to try.

  3. 03

    You check it before your students do.

    You get a link and go through every scene. If a fact is off or something is out of order, tell us and we change it.

  4. 04

    Students open a link.

    It runs in the browser. There is nothing to install, and it works for revision the night before an exam as well as in class.

What we’ve built so far

Every course is open to try. The ones built from a college module follow that module slide by slide.

Built from a college module

  • Cogito
    Foundations of AI

    What AI is, the four ways of defining it, the eight fields it borrows from, and its history — in the deck’s order.

    Introduction to AI, Module 1 (slides 5–34) · 23 scenes · First year

  • Bastion
    Cyber Security

    Attack surfaces, the threat landscape, phishing to ransomware, defence in layers, and how detection evolved.

    Cyber Security, Module 1 (37 slides) · 36 scenes · 6th semester

  • Forge
    Software Engineering

    What software engineering is, kinds of software products, what makes software good, the process, the web, and professional ethics.

    Software Engineering, Chapter 1 (12 slides) · 15 scenes · Undergraduate

    In progress

Our own courses

  • Axiom
    Algebra

    Solving for the unknown — variables, equations, functions, graphs, lines and quadratics.

    13 scenes · Beginner

  • Automa
    Automata Theory

    Not a course about machines — a machine you hold. Drag its states, cut its arrows, break its rules, and watch it tell you exactly what changed.

    11 scenes · Beginner · interactive lab

  • Chlora
    Biology

    How a leaf turns sunlight, air and water into sugar — and the oxygen you breathe.

    13 scenes · Beginner

  • Flux
    Calculus

    The math of change — limits, derivatives, integrals and the theorem that ties them together.

    13 scenes · Beginner

  • Elementa
    Chemistry

    Atoms, electron shells, the periodic table and chemical bonds — built up one particle at a time.

    13 scenes · Beginner

  • Reacta
    Chemistry II

    Why reactions explode or crawl — energy, rates, equilibrium, acids and redox.

    13 scenes · Intermediate

  • Nimbus
    Cloud Computing

    Where “the cloud” really lives — data centers, containers, scaling, CDNs and serverless.

    13 scenes · Intermediate

  • Volta
    Electronics

    From a single drifting electron all the way to a tiny computer that counts on its own.

    13 scenes · Beginner

  • Helix
    Genetics

    The code of life — the double helix, replication, gene-to-protein, inheritance and evolution.

    13 scenes · Beginner

  • Pulse
    Human Body

    The machine you live inside — cells, the heart and blood, breathing, digestion and the nervous system.

    13 scenes · Beginner

  • Prism
    Light & Optics

    How we see — rays and shadows, reflection, refraction, lenses, the eye and the rainbow.

    13 scenes · Beginner

  • Relay
    Networking

    What happens when you open a website — packets, IP & DNS, routing, TCP, HTTPS and the web.

    13 scenes · Intermediate

  • PyVisual
    Python

    Python from the ground up — variables, logic, loops, lists and functions, all animated.

    13 scenes · Beginner

  • CVisual
    C Programming

    Variables, loops, conditionals and control flow — the C language, animated from scratch.

    34 scenes · Beginner

    In progress
  • Cosmos
    Physics

    Gravity, motion and orbits — finally answer why the Moon doesn’t just fall down.

    16 scenes · Beginner

    In progress

Questions colleges ask us

What do you need from us to build a course?+

The slides you teach the module from, the syllabus, and the order you cover topics in. Slides that are only a diagram or figure are fine; we transcribe those too so nothing on the syllabus is dropped.

Does the course follow our syllabus and slide order?+

Yes. We build it scene by scene in the same order as your module, with the same facts and terms your students will be examined on.

What does a scene look like?+

Each idea gets one scene. It says plainly what the thing is, shows it working as an animation the student can control, gives a real example, then asks the student to try it themselves.

Which subjects can you turn into interactive courses?+

So far: artificial intelligence, cyber security, electronics, physics, chemistry, biology, calculus, algebra, networking, cloud computing, automata theory and programming. If an idea can be drawn, it can usually be made interactive.

Can we review the course before students use it?+

Yes. You get a link and can go through every scene. Anything inaccurate or out of order is changed before students see it.

Do students need to install anything?+

No. A course is a web link that opens in the browser, in class or at home for revision.

Teaching a module that students find hard to picture?

Email us the course code, which module, and the slides if you can share them. We’ll write back with how we’d build it and which scenes it would need.

Send us a module