Raccoon Gang

10/15/2026

A microcredential can be short and still be badly designed. Cutting a semester course in half and adding a badge at the end usually keeps too much content and removes too much time. A better starting point is the opposite: define the skill first, decide what would prove it, then build only the learning needed to get there 🎯

That also changes when employers should be involved, how assessment works, and how credentials should stack into larger pathways.

👇We put together a practical guide to designing microcredentials that actually make sense to learners and employers: https://cutt.ly/ZyEkxV5V

10/13/2026

Smart Country Convention 2026 starts today, and we’re in Berlin 🇩🇪
For the next few days, our co-founder Peter Koblyakov will be at SCCON26, meeting people working in digital government, digital education, public services, and transformation projects.

At Raccoon Gang, we work with learning platforms, custom eLearning solutions, integrations, and digital products for organizations in education, business, and the public sector — so conferences like this are always a good place for the right conversations.

If you’re also in Berlin, let’s meet.

Come say hi, exchange ideas, and talk about EdTech, GovTech, digital learning, or whatever interesting project brought you to the conference.

Peter is there and happy to connect — so let’s make Berlin a little more useful together!

10/11/2026

In healthcare, a missing training record is not just annoying admin. It can become a real problem during an audit, accreditation review, or incident 🏥

That changes what an LMS needs to do. Course delivery is only one part of it. The system also has to track clinical competencies, certifications, renewals, mandatory training, role changes, and the history behind all of that.

We put together a practical guide to healthcare LMSs: what hospitals, clinics, and health systems should check before choosing a platform, which integrations matter, how compliance requirements affect the setup, and where generic LMSs usually start to struggle.

👇 If you’re evaluating a learning platform for healthcare, this is a useful place to start: https://cutt.ly/1yQNBqT3

Learn what a Healthcare LMS is, compare leading healthcare learning management systems, explore essential features, and discover how to choose the best LMS for hospitals and healthcare organizations.

10/08/2026

We’re heading to Berlin for Smart Country Convention 2026! Our Co-Founder Peter Koblyakov, will be there on October 13–15 at Messe Berlin.

Smart Country Convention brings together people from public administration, business, politics, and academia to talk about digital government, AI, cybersecurity, smart cities, mobility, digital education, skills, and the broader digital transformation of public services.

For us, it’s a good place to meet people working at the intersection of technology, learning, and public-sector innovation, and to catch up on what’s changing across Europe.

If you’re going to SCCON26 too, let us know. Peter will be happy to meet, talk EdTech, AI, digital learning, or simply grab a coffee between sessions.

📅 October 13–15, 2026
📍 Messe Berlin

10/05/2026

Mandatory training completed, quiz passed, certificate earned ✅ But will employees know what to do when a real compliance risk appears?

That’s where gamification can make a difference. Realistic scenarios, decisions, feedback, and repeated practice help turn “I completed the course” into “I know how to act.”

👇 See how to make compliance training actually stick: https://cutt.ly/BynMW9gi

Learn how gamification for compliance training increases engagement, improves knowledge retention, and helps organizations deliver effective mandatory learning through an LMS.

10/05/2026

Conference season is getting busy again, and OEB is already on the calendar for December 📆

Open edX Community is joining OEB 2026 as a Gold Sponsor, and we’ll be in Berlin too. Raccoon Gang is an official Open edX Partner, and this community has been a big part of our work for years, from platform development and customization to integrations, mobile learning, AI, and instructional design.

This year’s OEB theme is Sovereign Learning: Trust, Agency amp; the Education Reset, with a lot of the discussion focused on AI, human judgment, learner agency, trust, and how education should change as intelligent systems become part of everyday learning and work. That gives us plenty to talk about.

We’re especially looking forward to seeing people from the Open edX community there. It’s always useful to meet the teams building on the platform, compare what everyone is working on, and hear where institutions are running into real problems rather than just talking about technology in the abstract.

OEB 2026 runs December 2–4 in Berlin. See you there 👋

We’re proud to welcome Open edX as a Gold Sponsor of OEB 2026. ✨

Open learning ecosystems are helping institutions, organisations and communities create more flexible and accessible learning experiences.

As a platform for online learning, Open edX supports organisations around the world in building, delivering and scaling digital education and training.

Their work connects closely with many of the conversations at OEB 2026: how technology can support learning, expand access and help shape the future of education.

We look forward to welcoming the Open edX community to Berlin and continuing the conversation around Sovereign Learning: Trust, Agency & the Education Reset.

Learn more about Open edX and how to join OEB 2026 as an exhibitor or sponsor with the link in the bio.

09/30/2026

📬 Our latest Raccoon Gang Monthly Digest is out. This month, we spent quite a lot of time on one question: what happens after you add the technology?

AI can speed up course production. An LMS can deliver training at scale. A content library can give you hundreds of courses overnight. None of that automatically tells you whether people are learning the right things or whether the system fits the way your organization actually works.

In this edition, we share the recording of our September webinar on AI in course development, plus new guides on technical training, upskilling and reskilling, healthcare LMSs, microcredentials, compliance gamification, custom vs off-the-shelf learning solutions, and faster course production.

Everything from the past month is in one place 👇
🔗 Read the full digest: https://cutt.ly/8ynhBVWn

09/29/2026

VLE or LMS? Sometimes the difference is smaller than you think. 👀

A virtual learning environment can combine live sessions, self-paced courses, assessments, collaboration, analytics, and personalized learning in one place.

But how does it actually differ from an LMS? Which platforms work as VLEs today? And when does it make sense to build a custom environment instead of using an off-the-shelf solution?

👇We break it down in our full guide: https://cutt.ly/dynqRrCo

09/25/2026

“Custom LMS” doesn’t always mean building an entire platform from scratch 🧩 That distinction matters, because the usual build-vs-buy comparison is often too simple.

For standard onboarding, compliance training, certificates, reporting, and common integrations, an off-the-shelf LMS may be completely sufficient. If your learning platform depends on proprietary workflows, unusual certification logic, complex permissions, deep integrations, or business-specific data, you may need much more control.

And there’s also a middle ground: using a mature open-source platform like Open edX and customizing the parts that actually need to be different ⚙️

The important question is not how many features each LMS has. It’s how much of the platform your organization actually needs to control.

In our new guide, we compare off-the-shelf LMSs, Open edX-based custom platforms, and fully custom development, including costs, ownership, integrations, maintenance, and where each approach makes sense: https://cutt.ly/XycqSB4A

09/23/2026

Canvas is easy to overestimate if you judge it by the feature list alone.

It does the core academic LMS work well: courses, assignments, grading, calendars, discussions, notifications, integrations. But once you need deeper customization, richer interactive content, advanced analytics, or more flexible learning experiences, you usually start adding other tools around it.

That doesn’t make Canvas a bad choice. It just means you need to be clear about what should live in Canvas and what shouldn’t.
We put together a full guide to Canvas LMS with its main features, workflows, strengths, limitations, pricing, and the questions worth asking before choosing it.

👇Read the full article: https://cutt.ly/rycqSWrk