The student/instructor dashboard people see after logging in can be rebuilt block by block, the same way the Course Catalog and Course Page layouts can — instead of only choosing from Academy’s built-in settings, you can open the dashboard’s actual layout in the block editor and add, remove, or move any block.
How to access
post.php?post={id}&action=edit) for a pattern titled “Academy: Dashboard” — showing a live preview of the dashboard (sidebar menu, top bar, welcome message, stat cards, and the enrolled-courses table) built entirely from Academy blocks: academy/dashboard, academy/dashboard-sidebar, academy/dashboard-topbar, academy/dashboard-content, academy/dashboard-welcome, academy/dashboard-stats, academy/dashboard-continue, and academy/dashboard-teaching-courses.
What can be changed there
Because the dashboard is just blocks nested inside an academy/dashboard wrapper block, you can, using ordinary block-editor tools:
academy/dashboard-sidebar relative to academy/dashboard-content inside the academy/dashboard block.The pattern is a normal wp_block post, so it also supports the editor’s synced-pattern behavior (shown as “Sync status: Synced” in the sidebar) — editing it here updates the live dashboard immediately once the underlying dashboard engine is set to “Block dashboard” and the Customize screen is saved.
Resetting to the default
Once a dashboard layout pattern has been created, the Dashboard tab’s Dashboard layout panel shows a Reset button next to Edit with Blocks (visible whenever the layout is marked “customized”). Clicking it calls the same REST action used to create the layout — academy/v1/course-design/dashboard-layout — but with { do: 'reset' }, which deletes the pattern post and reverts the dashboard to Academy’s built-in block arrangement (Academy\FrontendDashboard\Layout::default_markup()), the same default markup shown above before any customization.
Switching back to Classic dashboard at any time does not delete your block layout — it just stops using it. Switching back to Block dashboard later picks the same customized pattern back up, provided it has not been reset.
Verification notes
Verified live: on Academy LMS > Customize > Dashboard, switched the engine radio to Block dashboard, which revealed the Dashboard layout panel with an Edit with Blocks button (not present under Classic dashboard). Clicking it triggered a beforeunload navigation to post.php?post={id}&action=edit, landing on a WordPress reusable-pattern editor titled “Academy: Dashboard”, confirming the mechanism described in dev_academy/containers/backend-dashboard/pages/design/dashboard.js (editLayout() posts { do: 'edit' } to academy/v1/course-design/dashboard-layout, then navigates to the returned editUrl) and includes/frontend-dashboard/layout.php (Layout::ensure() creates a wp_block post from default_markup() if none exists yet, Layout::state() returns its post.php?post={id}&action=edit edit URL). The Reset button and its { do: 'reset' } call were confirmed from source but not clicked live, to avoid deleting the pattern created during this verification; Layout::reset() in the same file confirms it deletes the pattern post and clears the stored option, which is what reverts the dashboard to the default block arrangement.