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Tessera’s design comes from a research report covering learning-experience design, LMS usability benchmarks, why Canvas leads the market, evidence on AI tutors and AI-assisted authoring, and learner personas. The full report, with all 72 sources, is on the live site: research report.

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The thesis

  1. Borrow Canvas’s backbone, not its surface. Canvas leads North American higher education on structure (modules, fast grading, reliability, integrations), not on measured usability: faculty rated it 68.9 on the System Usability Scale, about average. A calmer interface on the same backbone has room to win.
  2. AI is a governed co-author and a hint-first tutor. In a field experiment, unguarded GPT-4 raised practice scores but lowered exam scores; a tutor that gave hints instead of answers avoided that harm (Bastani et al., PNAS, 2025). A carefully scaffolded AI tutor doubled median learning gains over an active-learning class (Kestin et al., Scientific Reports, 2025).
  3. Personalize on evidence, not “learning styles.” Style-matching lacks the evidence it needs (Pashler et al., 2008; a 2024 meta-analysis found the required pattern in only 26% of outcomes). Tessera personalizes on goals, time, prior knowledge, language, accessibility, device, and role.
  4. Agents propose, people apply. Bulk or agentic actions appear as previewable change sets.
  5. Quality and accessibility are checked before publishing, including AI-generated content.

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The 15 principles

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The tutor modes

Instructors choose a tutor mode for each activity, within limits an administrator sets for each program. The answer key is never a tutor source. Learners always see which mode is on, who set it, and what their instructor can see.