The SPIRAL Model™

A six-step system that helps you turn your expertise into courses that genuinely teach and transform. SPIRAL shows you how to design courses that follow the natural patterns of human learning, ensuring your knowledge becomes truly teachable and creates lasting capability.

Natural Learning Progression

Six interconnected phases that spiral outward like chambers in a nautilus shell, each building on the previous with mathematical precision. SPIRAL follows the natural order of how minds develop understanding, creating an inevitable progression from initial spark to successful launch that honors cognitive development patterns.

Organic Course Architecture

Every phase works with the natural rhythms of learning rather than against them, like tending a garden through its complete growth cycle. SPIRAL helps you cultivate educational experiences that develop organically from solid foundations, ensuring your expertise transforms into knowledge that actually takes root and flourishes in learners' minds.

Biomimetic Design Principles

Based on learning science that mirrors the patterns found throughout nature's most efficient systems. SPIRAL adapts proven instructional design methodology to follow the same spiral development patterns that govern everything from nautilus shells to galaxy formation, creating course creation that feels both systematic and alive.

The Science of Effective Course Design

Great courses work because they're built around how learners naturally process and retain information, following the same developmental patterns found throughout the natural world. The human brain builds understanding by connecting new concepts to existing knowledge—like how ecosystems strengthen through interconnected relationships—so when you structure your content to follow this natural process, learning becomes more effective and lasting.

The SPIRAL Model™ gives you a systematic approach where each decision builds on the previous one, creating chambers of understanding that expand with mathematical precision. While six steps might seem comprehensive, the model is designed to focus your attention on one specific element at a time, keeping you centered on what truly matters: creating an experience that works for your learners by honoring how minds naturally develop capability.

Below you'll find an overview of each step in The SPIRAL Model™. Each phase tackles a distinct aspect of course creation, ensuring you build courses that create genuine understanding and lasting capability through natural learning progression.

Spark

Vision & Goals
The Spark phase ignites your course creation by defining the transformation your course creates, establishing specific learning targets, and understanding your learners' starting point. Like striking the initial spark that lights a fire, this comprehensive foundation phase creates the energy and illumination needed for everything that follows. You're sparking both your course vision and your understanding of how learners will experience that transformation.

This methodology focuses on:

  • Sparking clear course vision through concrete, measurable transformation goals

  • Igniting specific learning objectives that connect to real-world application
  • Illuminating learners' existing knowledge and natural learning patterns

Plot

Content Mapping
The Plot phase maps out your content territory by sequencing information logically and planning your modules and lessons strategically. Like a navigator plotting a course through uncharted terrain, this systematic approach charts the path from your learners' current knowledge to expert capability. You're plotting both the route and the landmarks that will guide learners through their learning journey.

This methodology focuses on:

  • Plotting content progression in natural learning sequences

  • Charting module and lesson architecture for optimal navigation
  • Mapping logical flow that guides learners inevitably toward mastery

Inspire

Lesson Design
The Inspire phase transforms your planned content into individual lessons that awaken genuine skill development while respecting natural cognitive capacity. Like an artist inspiring life into raw material, this development approach breathes motivation and capability into your educational content. You're inspiring both the content itself to become truly teachable and the learners to develop genuine competence.

This methodology focuses on:

  • Inspiring lessons that awaken understanding and performance

  • Breathing life into content through optimal cognitive pacing
  • Motivating skill development through confidence-building practice

Render

Content Creation
The Render phase transforms your educational concepts into their final communicative form through strategic scripting and visual design. Like an artist rendering a vision into visible reality, this systematic approach gives form and substance to your instructional ideas. You're rendering abstract knowledge into concrete, teachable communication that learners can actually grasp and use.

This methodology focuses on:

  • Rendering clear communication through learner-appropriate language

  • Bringing visual clarity to complex concepts through strategic design
  • Giving tangible form to learning through coordinated text and visual elements

Align

Integration & Testing
The Align phase brings all your separate course components into perfect coordination and harmony. Like aligning precision instruments for optimal performance, this integration methodology ensures every element works in concert with every other element. You're aligning not just course components, but aligning your entire educational experience with how learning actually happens.

This methodology focuses on:

  • Aligning all course elements into seamless educational harmony

  • Coordinating platform capabilities with learning objectives
  • Bringing course components into precise functional alignment

Launch

Release & Iterate
The Launch phase propels your completed course into the world with systems for measuring real learning outcomes and continuous improvement. Like launching a rocket with ongoing trajectory monitoring, this implementation methodology sends your course into active learning environments while tracking its performance. You're launching both the course and the systems that ensure it continues flying toward learner success.

This methodology focuses on:

  • Launching course with optimal propulsion and learner support systems

  • Propelling meaningful measurement of learning achievement
  • Sending systematic improvement processes into ongoing operation

Ready to Put The SPIRAL Model Into Action?

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Every course in the Forma & Function ecosystem is built on this systematic model, ensuring you get consistent, evidence-based instruction that honors natural learning patterns no matter which aspect of course creation you want to master. Whether you're just starting with course design fundamentals or diving deep into advanced instructional techniques, each course applies these same principles to help you create learning experiences that genuinely work by following the natural order of human development.

Visit our course catalog to explore in-depth training on each phase of The SPIRAL Model, plus specialized courses that help you apply these principles to your specific teaching goals and learner needs, creating educational experiences that feel both rigorous and inevitable.
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Explore the research foundation behind
this learner-centered approach.

Discover the educational theorists and design principles that inform every aspect of the Forma & Function methodology.

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