In the Studio
Where the design work happens.
In the Studio is BrightBow's course track, built for the people who create and lead learning for adults. If you're designing asynchronous courses, facilitating live sessions, or both, this is where you'll find the work that's meant to help you do that better.
The courses here aren't built to produce completion rates. They're built to change how you work after they end.
The Problem
Most learning doesn't stick. That's not an accident.
Here's what tends to happen: someone designs a session, the content is solid, the learners show up, and the conversation is good. Then everyone goes back to work and almost nothing changes. Not because the content was wrong, but because it wasn't designed to last.
Adults don't absorb new information the way children do. They interpret it through years of experience, competing demands, and deeply established habits. When learning is designed without accounting for that, it fades, not because the learner wasn't paying attention, but because the design didn't give it anywhere to land.
There's a second layer to this. Most people who design and deliver learning came to it through their subject area first. They know their content deeply, and that expertise matters. But designing learning is a different skill, and most people picked it up through instinct and observation rather than any formal foundation. That works until it doesn't, and when it stops working, it's usually hard to see why.
That's the gap these courses are built to address.
The Design Philosophy
Built on how adults actually learn.
In the 1970s, Malcolm Knowles formalized what researchers and practitioners had been observing for years: adults learn differently than children, and those differences are consistent enough to build a framework around. Adults are self-directed. They bring prior experience that shapes how they interpret new information. Their motivation tends to come from the inside, not from external pressure. And relevance isn't a nice-to-have; it's the condition that makes engagement possible in the first place.
This framework is called andragogy, and it's the foundation every BrightBow course is built on.
But andragogy alone doesn't close the gap. Transfer of learning, meaning actually applying what you learned to your real work, is where most learning experiences fall short. Research by Baldwin and Ford, and by Thomas Guskey, confirms consistently that a single well-designed session rarely produces lasting change on its own. Transfer depends on conditions: learning that connects clearly to real work, space to practice before full implementation, and a structure that supports returning to the material over time rather than experiencing it once and moving on.
Every design decision in a BrightBow course traces back to these principles. If you want the full version of this, the adult learning theory behind the courses lives at brightbowlearning.com/andragogy.
The Structure
Every BrightBow course moves through the same three-phase structure, because the research points to the same sequence every time.
This structure isn't decorative. It's why the courses work the way they do.
Foundation Adults engage with new content after they understand why it matters to them, not before. Foundation brings forward what you already know, connects the work to what's actually at stake in your practice, and builds shared language before anything new is introduced. It doesn't rush.
Experience Understanding something and being able to use it are not the same thing. Experience builds real understanding through guided exploration and practice in conditions that resemble actual work. Ideas become usable here, not just recognized.
Integration A single encounter with new material is rarely enough to change how someone works. Integration creates the conditions for learning to carry forward: time to reflect on what landed, space to make it yours, and a structure that supports returning to the material after the session ends. This phase isn't a conclusion. It's an opening.
The Courses
Two courses, two specific problems.
For when your design is solid and the learning still doesn't carry over.
You've designed learning that should have worked. The content was solid, the session went fine, and people said the right things on the way out. Then they went back to work and almost nothing changed.
That's a design problem, not a content problem, and it's more common than the industry likes to admit. Making Learning Stick is built around a single question: what does it actually take for adults to move from new information to lasting change? The answer involves how adults interpret new material through prior experience, what conditions make transfer possible, and why a single well-designed session is rarely enough on its own.
This course gives you a research-grounded framework you can apply to whatever you're designing next, whether that's an asynchronous course, a live session, or something in between.
The course set includes a Start Here guide to orient you before you begin, audio and video access links, a companion workbook designed to work alongside the course and function on its own, and a reference card built for returning to after the course ends.
A facilitator set is available separately for $67, and includes the facilitator guide, slide deck, session planner, and learner resource. If you're planning to run this material with a live group, complete the course as a learner first. The facilitator set is designed to extend that experience, not replace it.
For when people show up, participate, and leave exactly the same.
Getting people to show up is the easy part. Getting them to actually engage is something else entirely, and if you've been designing learning for adults for any length of time, you've felt the difference between a room that's going through the motions and a room where something real is happening.
From Compliance to Commitment is about the conditions that create that second kind of room. Not motivation tactics, not engagement gimmicks, but the underlying factors that move adult learners from surface participation to genuine investment, and how to design for those conditions from the start. The shift from compliance to commitment isn't something you can manufacture after the fact. It has to be built into the structure of the learning itself.
This course addresses how to do that, grounded in what the research actually says about adult motivation, autonomy, and the conditions that make commitment possible.
The course set includes a Start Here guide to orient you before you begin, audio and video access links, a companion workbook designed to work alongside the course and function on its own, and a reference card built for returning to after the course ends.
A facilitator set is available separately for $67, and includes the facilitator guide, slide deck, session planner, and learner resource. If you're planning to run this material with a live group, complete the course as a learner first. The facilitator set is designed to extend that experience, not replace it.
Coming Soon
More in development.
The Studio is a growing body of work. The next course, Building Psychological Safety in Adult Learning Spaces, is in development. No release date yet. Courses release when they're ready.
If you'd like to hear when new courses become available, the newsletter is the best way to stay in the loop. Subscribe here.
In the Wild
Looking for something different?
In the Studio is where the design work happens. In the Wild is the other side of that: some of it is practical, some of it is just a break from the serious work, and occasionally it's both at once. If you need to step away from the design brain and laugh for a minute, it's there.