Learner-First Thinking
The one perspective shift that changes every course creation decision you make.
By the end of this course, you'll be able to identify when your design decisions are serving you instead of your learners. You'll know exactly what to do about it. That single shift is what makes every other course creation skill click into place.
This course is for you if...
Learner-First Thinking is a foundational course. It doesn't assume any prior knowledge of instructional design.
You've built a course or started planning one, and something about it feels off. You can't pinpoint exactly why.
You've followed course creation advice and found that some of it works and some of it doesn't, and you want to understand why.
You know your subject deeply but aren't confident that you're translating it in a way your learners can actually absorb.
You want a framework for making course design decisions that doesn't depend on guesswork or copying what others do.
Four things this course changes.
These aren't things you'll memorize. They're shifts in how you see and approach every course creation decision you'll ever make.
A new lens for every decision
You'll have a reliable filter for evaluating any course design choice: does this serve my learner, or does it serve me? That question simplifies everything.
The pattern behind the problems
Most course creation challenges trace back to the same root cause. Once you can see it, you stop chasing symptoms and start solving the actual problem.
Confidence in your design choices
When your decisions are anchored in learner needs rather than instinct, you can explain why your course is structured the way it is. You'll know it's right.
The foundation everything else builds on
Every other course creation skill works better once this perspective shift is in place: structure, pacing, assessment, practice design.
Holly Perret
Founder, Forma & FunctionMy career started in museum education, where I spent a decade building learning experiences for every kind of audience. Hundreds of programs, all ages, all levels of prior knowledge. That work built the instinct for making complex material accessible and designing hands-on experiences that help people learn by doing.
From there came fifteen years in corporate instructional design, turning static, ineffective training into something people learn from. I've worked across industries from technology to retail, developing everything from technical implementation training to leadership development to multilingual compliance courses.
Forma & Function exists because nobody was teaching course creators how to do this well. Not the corporate ID programs built for teams, and not the passive income programs that skip instructional design entirely. Everything here is built on the same principles I've applied professionally for twenty years.
Frequently asked questions.
Yes, completely. Learner-First Thinking is a free course with no strings attached. You don't need a credit card and there's no trial period. It's free because the perspective shift it teaches is foundational to everything else in the Forma & Function catalog, and we'd rather you have it than not.
Often more useful, not less. Experienced course creators have typically built up strong instincts about what works, but those instincts aren't always easy to articulate or replicate. This course gives you the underlying principle behind those instincts so you can apply them intentionally rather than stumbling onto them by accident.
It's designed to be completed in a single session. Most people finish in under two hours. The goal isn't to give you a lot of content to get through. It's to shift how you see course design, and that doesn't require a lot of time once the right idea lands.
No. This course assumes no prior knowledge of instructional design. It's written for course creators who know their subject well but haven't had formal training in how to teach it. The concepts are explained in plain language and the examples are drawn from everyday course creation decisions.
Most course creation advice focuses on tactics: how to structure modules, how to price, how to market. This course focuses on the principle behind the tactics. When you understand why learner-first design works, the tactics stop being a checklist and start making sense on their own terms. That's a different kind of useful.
Learner-First Thinking is the starting point. From here, the natural next step is the foundational course series, which covers the core frameworks that underpin all course design at Forma & Function: the difference between training, education, and development, and how to balance presentation, application, and feedback in your courses. You can explore the full catalog to find where your current goals fit best.
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