To answer the 3 questions:
1) Back when I was first starting, I learned the basics of Python on my own through little tools I'd come up with. But I really started learning when I joined a few discord servers and started bugging all the people with jobs in the cyber field (mainly security). I had a few that were very patient and answered all my questions and they'd help troubleshoot scripts and whatnot. But they'd always throw some tips in that I would have never thought have. They were things you could only have picked up through experience. I was lucky to have access to these figures who would give insight and resources when I first started. They were all really good at teaching me how to fish rather than giving me a fish. That gave me a major advantage over people who only read books and watched videos because I taught me how to question myself and solve a problem. I just had to emulate their questions in my head as I was going, and I didn't know it at the time, but I was learning through the principles you want to use. I learned to think of the end goal and come up with everything stopping me from doing. I'd work backward until I came to the end. Nothing can beat a mentor like that.

2) All the learning platforms now (with exception of on-site boot camps) teach through text or video. There is little human interaction, and justifiably so. Can you imagine 24/7 guidance for hundreds of thousands of people? I am convinced what I outlined in my response to number 1 is truly the best way to learn. If you take the opposites of all its advantages, you'll see that many of those are in modern-day learning platforms.

3) Logan covered the architectural aspects of this, so I'll take a more abstract approach. I believe it's important to define what a learning platform is. Denotatively, it's a place of learning, but connotatively, it's a curated list of resources often leading the learner down a rabbit hole of useless information and fluff. I think we need to redefine this connotation (stigma really) and understand that our platform should be the best place using the best methods to obtain information. Maybe we can simulate an apprenticeship or internship. I really don't think having a character act as your mentor would be a bad idea. It would give the user a sense of belonging and purpose and it would help connect them to the platform. We need everything we can get, and if we can get trust from our users, we will be very successful. We have to craft content delivery in such a way that it's the opposite of what the name may suggest. We can't deliver content. Everyone does that. That'll only end in us drowning in the shadows of our competitors. We have to sell it. Maybe this is the inner pep talk in me coming out, but I'm sure we've all seen the difference between an actor delivering lines and an actor selling lines. It's major and results in salaries with way too many damn digits in it. Our delivery has to be immersive, but we can't just throw a 3d 360 engine in there. Everything has to be perfect down to where we decide to put a comma.

-Toby