Same answer: one marked right, the other marked wrong

Question

One question was: Je __ ai invité pour Thanksgiving.The next was: Je __ ai appris que la France...The answer given for the first was "je l'ai" and for the second was "je lui ai." Why?

Accepted Answer

Bonjour Donna, 
I could only find the first example as a quiz question in this lesson - which is correct because it deals with what we call,  'direct object pronouns' - le/la/les
Your second example uses 'lui' which is an indirect object pronoun, because the verb 'apprendre quelque chose à quelqu'un' ( to teach someone something)  here has an à after it

Je lui ai appris à lire =  I taught him to read 
Je leur ai appris à conduire = I taught them to drive

This is the lesson that deals with indirect object pronouns -
Using lui/leur = him or her/them (French Indirect Object Pronouns)
I hope that this explains the difference but I would be interested to know where the second example came from.