For a single authoring environment to be sufficiently general to be applicable to contexts across the whole lifespan of learning, some of the benefits that come from knowledge-rich domain specificity have to be sacrificed. Consequently, it is an open question as to whether it is possible to achieve effective learning environments from a generic tool. REDEEM is an authoring environment that aims to achieve this by creating adapted and interactive learning environments from existing courseware. In this paper, a 10-year research program is described that has assessed the usability, functionality, and effectiveness of REDEEM's approach. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)