Summary: Use articles and blocks to organize your components. Use components to add interactions and questions. Use extensions for course-wide features.
The structure of Authoring - Library Content
The Dashboard contains courses. Each of the tiles shown below are courses.
Courses contain pages.
Pages contain articles.
Articles contain single or multiple blocks.
Blocks contain single or multiple components.
Here's what they look like when they're all put together:
What is the point of blocks, articles, and components?
It can seem like a matryoshka doll of e-learning, but there's a reason for these boxes within boxes.
Both articles and blocks can have extensions and graphical options applied to them to customise the blocks and components contained in them. You can also apply different types of headings to blocks, articles, and components to divide up your page.
Components are the different interactions and question types that can be added to your course E.g. multiple choice questions, text, graphics etc.
Extensions
Extensions are used to apply settings and features course-wide. This includes things like adding SCORM or xAPI tracking, or gamification elements which can then be configured on a component, block or article level, such as the health gauge.