Extending the Academy

A high-level guide to understanding the architecture, features, and workflow for creating custom content on the Layer5 Academy platform.

The Layer5 Cloud Academy is a modular learning management system (LMS) designed for building learning paths and interactive, hands-on challenges. It is deeply integrated into the Layer5 cloud ecosystem and Kanvas — a visual designer for cloud native infrastructure. This integration allows you to embed live visualizations, interactive designs, and contextual experiences directly into your courses.

This approach transforms learning from passive reading into active, hands-on practice.

Example of Academy

The ability to create, manage, and publish content is available to organizations on our Enterprise Plan. This plan includes full support for:

  • Multi-tenancy: Your content, users, and data are securely isolated from all other organizations.
  • White-labeling: You can brand the Academy with your own logo and color scheme.
  • Customization: You have complete control over the learning paths and challenges you create.

You can learn more about our subscription plans on the Layer5 Pricing page.

We believe you should always own your content. That’s why the Academy is designed around a Git-native workflow that avoids vendor lock-in.

Instead of using a restrictive web UI, you manage all your learning content within your own Git repositories. This gives you the full power of version control, collaboration through pull requests, and a workflow that your developers are already comfortable with.

The entire experience is powered by Hugo, a powerful static site engine, but we’ve abstracted away the complexity. You and your team only need to write in simple Markdown.

Your content is structured hierarchically to create a clear and logical learning experience for your users.

At the highest level, you have a Learning Path, which contains one or more Courses. Each Course is broken down into Modules, and each Module consists of individual learning activities like Pages (for text) and Labs (for hands-on practice). In addition, Tests can be integrated at various levels of this hierarchy. This modular structure makes your content easy to navigate, manage, and update.

For example, a Learning Path named “Mastering Kubernetes” might contain:

  • A Course on “Core Concepts”, which is broken down into multiple modules:
    • Module 1: “Workload Fundamentals”, containing a Page on the “Anatomy of a Pod” and a hands-on Lab for “Scaling Deployments”.
    • Module 2: “Networking Principles”, containing a Page that covers “Services and Ingress” and a Tests on networking concepts.
Last modified August 6, 2025: fix (84a9470f)