Wind turbines across the San Gorgonio Pass at golden hour, Coachella Valley

Instructional Design & Technology

Designing learning that meets people where they are.

I’m Stephen Bronack — a professor and instructional designer, and a teacher first. This is where I keep the work: the courses I build, the free library I curate, and writing on how learning really happens across the settings of everyday life.

Browse courses Free resource library

The work

Three ways in

Where to start

Courses

Practical, self-paced courses on instructional design, emerging technologies, and designing for distributed learners.

Explore courses → 02

Resource Library

A free, growing collection of articles, tools, and templates for designing learning — curated and tagged.

Open the library → 03

Writing

Short essays on teaching, distributed learning, and choosing technology without being chosen by it.

Read the blog →

An open desert road toward the mountains at golden hour

The Milky Way over Joshua trees at night

Why this exists

Learning happens across the settings of real life.

Not just the classroom — the commute, the couch, the space between shifts.

The work

So the work has to meet people there.

Everything here is built for learners whose days span physical and digital worlds — and for the designers and teachers who show up in them.

The work

Courses

Ways to learn this work — from a free weekly letter to a live founding cohort. Drag to browse.

Start free

With & From

The ideas, in the open — a weekly letter on designing learning for a classroom that now includes the machine. Start here; it costs nothing but your attention.

Free

The flagship

Designing Learning in the Age of Capable Machines

Six modules that teach you to design learning where people and capable AI work together — without handing the teaching over to the machine. You leave with a portfolio-ready design and a way to tell whether it worked.

$199

Fall 2026

Founding Cohort

The course, run live — with your own AI companions, a Waybook portfolio, and three showings alongside other people doing the same work. Founding seats are capped and priced once; they rise after this run.

$499

Work with me

Executive Coaching

One-on-one time on your program, your team, or your course — practical strategy for leading and designing learning with capable AI, from someone who has done it. Bring the real problem.

$199

For institutions

License a learning world

Stand up a full learning world for your program — your own Santa Noeta, with designed AI guides, portfolios, and showings. Priced to your scope, delivered through Avaworlds.

Custom

Meet people where they are

The settings of real life

Learning rarely happens where we plan for it to. Good design accounts for that. Explore the markers.

Warm Southern California light over the Coachella Valley, seen from a desk by a window