Academy

The Academy holds AO’s course: PDFs, videos and written lessons, organized into volumes, sections and chapters. Every member studies the same material. Your notes and study history are private to you.

Find a lesson

Open Academy from the sidebar.
Pick a volume from the buttons at the top. Its sections and chapters appear below, with the number of lessons in each section.
To see a single section, pick it from the section filter beside the view buttons. The filter stays set when you switch volumes, so you can compare the same section across volumes.
Switch between List view and Grid view with the buttons on the right.
Click a chapter to open it.

Each chapter card shows whether it’s a PDF, a video or a written lesson, and how long you’ve studied it so far. If nothing has been published yet, the page says The Academy is being prepared.

Study a chapter

A chapter opens in three panes on a desktop screen: the course outline on the left, the lesson in the middle and your notes on the right. Drag the dividers to resize them. On a phone, the lesson fills the screen, and the Curriculum and Notes buttons open the other two panes.

Under the lesson are four tabs:

Overview: what the lesson covers, if a summary has been added.
Resources: links attached to the lesson.
Discussion: the lesson’s thread in the community, once lesson discussions are set up. If you’re not a member yet, click Join lesson discussions. Click an author’s name to send them a direct message.
Study: your study timer and session history.

Links at the bottom take you to the previous and next chapter. Back to Academy returns to the library.

Take notes

Notes belong to the chapter you’re on, and only you can see them.

In the Notes pane, click New.
Type a title where it says “Untitled note”, then press Enter to move into the body.
Write your notes. Type / to add headings, lists, checklists, tables, images and other blocks.
Keep going. Notes save as you type, and the pane shows Saved once your changes are stored.

To go back to an earlier note, choose it from the note menu at the top of the pane. Your notes save before another chapter opens. If they can’t be saved, you stay on the current chapter and can retry.

Track your study time

The timer on the Study tab runs while the chapter is open and the window is in front. It pauses on its own when you switch to another tab or app, and it only counts one tab or device at a time.

Count up shows how long you’ve been studying.
Countdown sets a focus period. Pick 15 min, 25 min or 45 min.
Pause and Resume stop and restart the timer yourself.
Today and Total show your time on this chapter. Session history lists each saved session.

Your most recent chapters also appear in the Academy lane on your dashboard, so you can pick up where you left off.

Symbiote’s curriculum

The Symbiote curriculum button at the top of the Academy lists the teaching material Symbiote draws on, and the curriculum editions AO has published. See Symbiote.

If you manage the Academy

Administrators see editing controls in the library:

Add Volume creates a volume with a title and an optional description.
Inside a volume, add sections and chapters. A chapter can be a YouTube video, a PDF, an MP4 video, or notes only.
Drag volumes, sections and chapters by their handles to reorder them.
The settings icon next to Add Volume opens Hierarchy names, where you rename volumes, sections and chapters for every member. The new names appear on every button and count.
On a chapter, Edit lesson details and Edit resources change the overview and the list of links. A lesson can have up to 20 links.