Welcome to The Cognitive Lab
The Cognitive Lab is a seven-session, online live learning experience.
It's designed to deepen your understanding of how the brain works and apply it directly to how you design and facilitate learning.
Each 2-hour session blends:
• Collaborative investigations into how brain function connects to real-world learning design
• Content audits that unpack what works, what doesn’t, and why, through the lens of the brain
• Interactive experiments and scenario-based application
• Co-learning within a dynamic, peer- supported environment
What makes it different:
You won’t build from scratch. You’ll bring your current work (courses, modules, workshops, decks) and learn how to reimagine it using science-backed design strategies.
This is not just about acquiring knowledge; it's about making knowledge usable. You’ll leave each session with concepts and approaches you can apply immediately to your own learning designs and facilitation.
 What You'll Learn and Apply
Memory I: Creating the Foundations of Memory
Foundational insight into how the brain communicates and functions, giving teams a practical framework for talking about, designing and facilitating learning that works with biology, not against it.
Memory II: Finding It Again
What kind of memories are we helping to create? And how do we design strategies to help another brain practice, retrieve and bring knowledge back when it counts.
Metacognition: Your Brain’s Inner GPS
Practical tools for building self-awareness, adaptive thinking, and cognitive reflection into your learning designs — helping learners learn how to learn.
Neurochemistry, Motivation & Brain StatesÂ
Understand how the brain’s chemical messengers (like dopamine, acetylcholine, and cortisol) influence engagement, regulation, and readiness to learn — and how to leverage that knowledge in your timing, energy, and content flow.
Focus & Attention: The Science of Staying With It
Unpack the distinction between focus and attention, and explore how the brain manages both. Learn how to design distraction-resistant content using real cognitive cues.
Emotions & Learning: Fuel, Not Fluff
Explore the neuroscience of emotion and feeling — and why emotional resonance elevates memory formation, behavior change, and engagement.
Cognitive Control, Habit Design & Behavior
From intention to automation — convert insight into lasting behavior with habit loops, nudges, and cognitive control strategies embedded into your design.
