Forma & Function

Forma & Function

The space between knowing and teaching is where we live.

Course creation advice is full of assumptions that feel right but don't hold up. See where you stand.

Agree or disagree?

If any of those challenged what you expected to hear, you're in the right place. Every one of those principles is something we build from. That's what it looks like to design from learning science rather than convention.
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The Foundation

The Well-Built Course

Think about the last time you learned something that genuinely changed how you work. The information was clear, the sequence made sense, and by the end, you could do something you couldn't do at the start. That didn't happen by accident. It happened because someone designed it that way. A well-built course puts the learner at the center of every decision, and when that kind of intention runs through the whole experience, people don't just follow along. They learn.

What We Offer

Course creation built on how people actually learn.

A Clear Path from Idea to Course

PRAXXIS™ walks you through every stage of course creation, from defining what your learners need to launching a finished product. Each phase builds on the last so your skills develop alongside the course you're building.

Designed by an Instructional Designer

Everything we teach comes from 20+ years of professional experience in education and training, grounded in established research on how people learn, how skills develop through practice, and how knowledge transfers into real-world application.

Everything You Need to Build Well

Methodology training, practical frameworks you can use immediately, and resources that grow with you as your course creation skills sharpen over time. Nothing here is designed to be outgrown.

The Methodology

PRAXXIS™

A seven-phase course creation methodology where each phase shapes the next with precision. Select a phase to see what it does and why it matters.
01
Define the Problem

Profile

Every effective course begins by answering a specific question: what should learners be able to do after completing this course that they cannot do now? Profile is where you build a complete, precise picture of the performance gap your course will close, the people you're designing for, and the content scope that will actually serve them. This phase prevents the most common course creation failure: building a course around what you want to teach rather than what your learners need to learn.

02
Organize the Structure

Resolve

With a complete picture in hand, Resolve takes everything Profile produced and organizes it into a structure that follows how learners actually build understanding, not how experts organize knowledge. You work out your module and lesson architecture, determine what content belongs at each stage, and produce the structural blueprint your course will follow. The critical skill here is learning to think in learner-logical order rather than expert-logical order.

03
Design the Learning

Author

This is where most course creation advice stops being useful, because this is where instructional design actually begins. Author transforms your structural blueprint into designed learning experiences by determining how each lesson will present information, how learners will practice applying it, and how they will receive feedback on their performance. You select instructional methods, design practice activities, and build the mechanisms that turn information consumption into genuine skill development.

04
Build the Materials

eXecute

With your design blueprint complete, eXecute is where you create the actual deliverables. This includes writing lesson content, recording video, designing visual materials, building assessments, and producing every element learners will interact with. Because you completed the design work in previous phases, you're building to specifications rather than improvising, which is faster and produces better results.

05
Review the Build

eXamine

Before putting your course in front of real learners, eXamine is where you evaluate whether what you built actually matches what you designed. You check content against learning objectives, assess practice balance, verify sequencing logic, and review cognitive load at each lesson. This internal quality review catches problems that are cheap to fix now but expensive to discover through confused or disengaged learners. Most course creators skip this phase entirely.

06
Test and Refine

Iterate

With your internal review complete, Iterate puts your course in front of real learners for systematic validation. You pilot the course, collect structured feedback on whether the learning objectives are being met, identify where learners struggle or disengage, and refine accordingly. This phase treats your first version as a working prototype rather than a finished product.

07
Launch and Improve

Ship

Ship is both a milestone and the beginning of an ongoing cycle. You publish your course, establish systems for collecting learner data and feedback, and implement a structured improvement process that makes each iteration stronger than the last. The goal is a course that gets better over time based on evidence rather than assumption.

The Science

What We Know About Learning

Select any card to read the full principle.

Learning has a structure.

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Understanding builds in a specific order, each concept creating the conditions for the next. When course design respects that order, learners move steadily forward. Good structure is invisible to the learner. They simply feel like everything makes sense.

Connection is what makes learning last.

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Every new idea connects to something a learner already knows, and those connections are what make knowledge durable. Courses designed with this in mind produce understanding that holds up when it matters, the kind of learning people carry with them long after the course is finished.

Course design is a discipline, not a guess.

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There are well-established principles behind how people develop new skills and retain new information. When course creators learn those principles and apply them deliberately, the result is education that works with how minds function. That's what PRAXXIS™ is built to do.

There's a moment when it clicks.

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When a course is built well, there's a point where everything falls into place for the learner. That moment isn't magic. It's the direct result of intentional design: the right information, in the right order, with enough practice to make it stick. We build courses that create that moment on purpose.
Try It

Design a course in seven steps.

You're going to design a learning experience about making a cup of tea. Each step takes about 15 seconds. By the end, you'll have moved through all seven phases of PRAXXIS™ and you'll understand exactly what each one does.

P — Profile

What does your learner need before they can succeed?

Select everything someone needs to bring with them to learn how to make a cup of tea. Choose as many as make sense.
Now confirm the learning goal. Tap to agree.
Learning Goal

By the end of this course, the learner will be able to make a cup of tea from start to finish.

Notice

A couple of your selections aren't actually entry behaviors. Whether someone likes tea or has made coffee before doesn't affect whether they can learn to make it. Entry behaviors are about capability, not preference or prior experience with something similar.

What just happened

The things you selected are called entry behaviors, what your learner already knows and can already do. The learning goal defines the gap your course closes. Profile maps both ends of that gap. Everything you design from here lives in that space.

R — Resolve

Put these in the order a first-time tea maker needs to learn them.

Drag to reorder. Think about what someone needs to know before they can do each thing, not just the order the actions happen.
⠿Boil the water
⠿Pour the water into the cup
⠿Add the teabag to the cup
⠿Know how long to steep your tea
⠿Steep the teabag and start the timer
⠿Know the right water temperature for your tea
⠿Remove the teabag when the timer ends
What just happened

Most people sequence by action, which is how a recipe works. But a learner needs to know the steep time and water temperature before the steps that require them. Resolve is about building a sequence that follows learner logic, not expert logic or the order things happen.

A — Author

How will your learner encounter, practice, and confirm this?

Select every delivery method you'd use to help someone learn to make tea. Choose as many as make sense.
Notice

The quiz on tea facts and history is now highlighted. That's because it doesn't serve the learning goal. Your learner needs to be able to make tea, not know where it comes from. Every method you choose should connect directly back to the gap you defined in Profile.

What just happened

The things you selected are your delivery methods. Author is where you decide how your learner will encounter the material, practice it, and know if they got it right. These choices are design decisions, not content decisions, and each one should connect directly to the gap you defined in Profile.

X — eXecute

Match each thing you're building to the job it does.

Tap a delivery method on the left to select it, then tap where it belongs on the right. Tap a filled slot to clear it and reassign.
Step by step instructions
A short video
A practice round
A steep time chart
Lets them try it themselves
Tells them what to do
Helps them do it right on their own
Shows them what it looks like
What just happened

eXecute is building exactly what Author planned. Each thing you create has a specific job tied directly to your learning goal. If you're building something you can't connect to that goal, it probably doesn't belong in the course.

X — eXamine

Before anyone sees this, check your own work.

Learning goal: The learner will be able to make a cup of tea from start to finish.
What you designed in Author
Tick everything that's true about your course as you've designed it.
✓
Every piece connects back to the learning goal
✓
Something shows them what to do
✓
Something lets them practice
✓
Something tells them if they got it right
✓
The sequence follows learner logic, not action order
What just happened

eXamine is your internal quality check before a real learner ever sees your course. Problems you catch here are free to fix. Problems a confused learner finds are not. Most course creators skip this step entirely and go straight to launch.

I — Iterate

A real person tries it for the first time.

You give your tea course to a friend. They steep the tea too long and it comes out bitter. Before you fix anything, figure out what actually went wrong. Pick whichever feels most likely. There's no single right answer here.

Now decide what to do about it.

Select everything that makes sense given what you think went wrong.
What just happened

Iterate starts with diagnosis, not fixes. Understanding what actually went wrong is what tells you what to change. Jumping straight to solutions without knowing the cause is how courses get revised repeatedly without actually improving.

What your learner struggled with is your most valuable design information.

S — Ship

Your course is ready. Launch it.

Tap to publish, then select how you'll keep improving it after it's live.
Tap to launch

How to Make a Perfect Cup of Tea — published.

Select how you'll know if it's working and what to improve next.
What just happened

Ship is a milestone but not an ending. Every piece of feedback your course collects after launch is the beginning of the next version. The best courses get better over time because the people who built them kept paying attention after they hit publish.

You did it

You just designed a course.

ProfileDefined the gapYou identified what your learner brings and what they need to be able to do.
ResolveBuilt the sequenceYou ordered the learning so knowledge came before the action that required it.
AuthorChose the methodsYou selected how your learner would encounter, practice, and confirm the material.
eXecuteBuilt to specYou connected each deliverable to the specific job it does in the learning experience.
eXamineChecked the workYou verified your design against your learning goal before anyone saw it.
IterateLearned from a real personYou diagnosed what went wrong before deciding what to fix.
ShipLaunched and listenedYou published and put systems in place to keep making it better.

That was seven decisions about a cup of tea. Every course you'll ever build uses the same seven decisions. The only difference is scale. That's what PRAXXIS™ gives you: a process that works regardless of your topic, your audience, or how complex the learning is.

Learn more about PRAXXIS™

Experience course creation built on what actually works.

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