This work owes its first debt to the adult learners and the northern communities I designed for and taught in, who showed me that a course is a promise you make to someone whose evening you will never see. What I know about honest assessment, I learned from people whose documented lives turned out to be full of it.
To the colleagues and fellow designers who build the path with me every term and catch what I miss. To the mentors and scholars whose work forms the spine of both books — on cognitive load, andragogy, transfer, backward design, and prior-learning assessment — cited throughout, and leaned on with gratitude. To the readers of The Good Learner, who asked the question this second book exists to answer: all right — so how do we build it?
And to my family, who kept the trail open while I built it.
AI can haul the gravel. It cannot decide where the trail goes.
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