Authentic Learning Lab

Helps institutions see strengths, gaps, and priorities across learning experiences so they can choose context-appropriate next steps.

Helps institutions create usable, community-rooted curriculum shaped around their learners, goals, place, and real-world constraints.

Helps educators and leaders develop practical capacity and leave with useful designs, plans, shared language, or next steps.

Equip audiences with shared language, fresh perspectives, and relevant next steps for making learning more authentic and actionable.

Helps educators renew professional purpose, learn through place and community, and turn experience into ideas and practical next steps for their work.

Keep meaningful learning ideas visible and use them to spark conversation, reflection, and thoughtful design decisions.

Help learners explore authentic learning through questions and practical next moves grounded in four dimensions.

Helps educators create learning communities where people feel connected, known, challenged, and excited to show up.

Authentic Learning Diagnostic

The Authentic Learning Diagnostic is a facilitated, context-sensitive process for examining how the Four Dimensions of Authentic Learning show up across learners, educators, and institutional systems. It combines evidence, conversation, artifacts, and lived experience to help institutions understand what is happening and why. The diagnostic identifies strengths, uneven experiences, gaps, and opportunities, then supports leaders in choosing next steps suited to their context and goals. It is not an automated score or public checklist.

• Examine The Four Dimensions
  Builds a shared picture of how identity and agency, relationships, meaningful experiences, and impact are reflected in the institution’s learning experience.
• Ground Findings In Local Context
  Helps the institution understand not only what is happening but why, recognizing that the same visible practice can mean different things in different communities.
• Analyze Learners, Educators, And Systems
  Connects what learners and educators experience with the structures and systems that shape their work, giving leaders a broader view of institutional coherence.
• Clarify The Institutional Picture
  Gives leaders and the community a shared view of how authentic learning is experienced across the institution.
• Reveal Gaps And Uneven Experiences
  Surfaces where the Four Dimensions are not consistently experienced and where institutional conditions may conflict with stated goals.
• Choose A Context-Fit Pathway
  Helps the institution select an appropriate next step based on its findings, context, and goals rather than defaulting to a preselected intervention.
• Recognize Strengths Worth Extending
  Helps the institution identify what is already working well and consider how to preserve or build on those strengths.
• Identify Goal-Connected Priorities
  Turns diagnostic findings into a focused set of opportunities for the institution to consider in relation to its own goals.
• Support Leadership Decisions
  Creates space for leaders to discuss the diagnostic findings and consider which work should follow.

Curriculum in a Box

Curriculum in a Box is a bespoke curriculum-design service for schools, universities, nonprofits, and other organizations. Each engagement is built around the client’s learners, graduate profile, place, institutional context, and people. Students, teachers, families, administrators, board members, and community partners can help shape the work. Depending on scope, the completed system may include curriculum architecture, learning sequences, model projects or experiences, educator guides, assessments, learner materials, implementation plans, and professional learning. Designs are created for the client rather than sold as an off-the-shelf kit.

• Build Curriculum Around Your Community
  The design reflects the learners and community it serves, including the place, local knowledge, and goals that make the curriculum specific to that institution.
• Shape Curriculum With Its Users
  Involving the people who will live with the curriculum allows their perspectives and needs to inform its design from the outset.
• Fit Curriculum To Real Conditions
  Plans for the practical conditions of the institution, helping make the design usable in day-to-day settings rather than only on paper.
• Create The Materials Your Project Needs
  The completed system can bring together selected curriculum structures, learning materials, assessment tools, and supporting resources for the client’s project. Not every engagement includes every component.
• Design Backward From Learner Outcomes
  Clarifies the desired learner outcomes and uses them to guide curriculum design, including development of a graduate profile when needed.
• Test And Refine The Design
  Develop and test materials with the people who will use them, then strengthen the design based on evidence and practical experience.
• Prepare Teams To Implement Curriculum
  Include implementation planning and professional learning as needed to support educator capacity and a practical path for putting the design into use.
• Apply The Four Dimensions
  Use a shared framework to consider identity and agency, relationships, real-context experiences, and the effects of learning in curriculum design.

Professional learning

Professional learning for educators and leaders, designed to make adult learning authentic and useful. Participants examine real work, learn with one another, make decisions, create and test ideas, and leave with a path they can apply. Experiences can focus on the Four Dimensions of Authentic Learning, community-connected curriculum, authentic experiences, rigor and transfer, student agency and impact, or authentic professional lives. Formats include keynotes with working sessions, half- or full-day learning, multi-session series, leadership retreats, design studios, cohort-based implementation support, and virtual learning and consultation.

Category: Continuing Professional Education Services

• Apply Learning To Real Work
  Participants work with real challenges and test ideas they can use, rather than only receiving information or inspiration.
• Build Shared Language
  The Four Dimensions give participants a shared way to examine learning and identify opportunities to strengthen it.
• Leave With Usable Next Steps
  Participants can take away concrete materials or decisions that support continued work, such as a prototype, implementation plan, or redesigned experience.
• Explore Relevant Design Challenges
  Educators can focus on specific questions in curriculum, rigor, community connection, student agency, impact, or their own professional experience.
• Choose A Suitable Format
  Organizations can select from single-session, extended, cohort-based, retreat, studio, and virtual formats.

Keynotes and speaking

Nicholas J. Martino delivers keynotes and other speaking engagements using stories, tested frameworks, and practical provocations drawn from his work designing learning across schools, communities, cultures, and disciplines. Each engagement is shaped for its audience and connected to what participants need to consider or do next. Topics include the Four Dimensions of Authentic Learning, community-centered curriculum, authentic learning beyond simulated projects, education in the age of AI, and moving from inspiration to implementation. Formats include keynotes, workshops, leadership conversations, moderation, emceeing, panel facilitation, and customized event learning experiences.

• Explore A Shared Framework For Learning
  The signature keynote introduces the Four Dimensions of Authentic Learning and helps audiences examine how identity, connection, experience, judgment, and impact appear in education.
• Shape The Message To Your Audience
  The content is designed around the audience and the next questions, decisions, or actions relevant to them.
• Connect Ideas To Real Learning Practice
  Audiences encounter ideas through stories and frameworks grounded in learning design across varied settings and communities.
• Turn Shared Vision Into Next Steps
  This session connects agreement about a vision with the conditions, decisions, and actions needed to move forward.
• Choose A Format That Fits Your Event
  Organizers can explore keynote, workshop, leadership conversation, moderation, emceeing, panel facilitation, or a customized event learning experience.
• Extend The Conversation Beyond The Keynote
  Organizations can connect a speaking engagement to a working session or further support, including professional learning, a diagnostic, or curriculum work.
• See Your Community As Curriculum
  Audiences consider how local people, places, knowledge, and questions can become part of learning.
• Connect Learning With Real-World Contexts
  This speaking topic helps audiences examine how real relationships, constraints, feedback, and consequences can shape learning experiences.
• Consider What Education Must Develop
  Audiences explore capabilities and human experiences that the speaking topic identifies as important alongside AI-generated information and products.

Authentic Educator Retreat

A limited-cohort, place-based professional experience planned for educators and school leaders in Puerto Vallarta in 2027. Participants will learn with local people and places, explore the Four Dimensions of Authentic Learning, and connect their experience to their professional purpose and work. The program is designed to balance shared experiences with reflection, dialogue, and design. Program directions, partners, sites, and logistics will be confirmed before registration opens.

• Learn Through Puerto Vallarta
  Engage with the city and region as part of the learning experience, encountering local contexts that cannot be reproduced in a hotel meeting room.
• Apply The Four Dimensions
  Explore the Four Dimensions through a professional experience that connects identity and purpose, relationships, active learning, and the effects participants can bring back to their work.
• Turn Insights Into Practical Next Steps
  Connect the retreat experience to a real context and identify a commitment, design direction, or other next step participants can adapt for their work.
• Reconnect With Professional Purpose
  Use reflection to reconsider professional values, strengths, experiences, and direction as an educator or leader.
• Build Peer And Local Connections
  Learn alongside a limited group of educators and engage with local people and practitioners, creating opportunities for relationships and perspectives beyond participants' usual professional circles.
• Engage In Purposeful Active Learning
  Take part in active learning shaped by real places and contexts, rather than experiences designed simply to fill an itinerary.
• Reflect, Dialogue, And Design Together
  Make meaning of shared experiences through reflection and conversation, with opportunities to exchange feedback and work on curriculum or experience design.
• Learn In A Focused Small Cohort
  Participate in a limited-group experience designed to support trust, meaningful engagement, and the reflective quality of the program.
• Connect Retreat Learning To Team Work
  Schools can support individual or team participation and may connect the experience to follow-up professional learning, curriculum design, or an implementation conversation.

Authentic Learning Poster Series

A free digital collection of ten posters featuring ideas about authentic learning, including “Start with wonder,” “Connection before content,” and “Use AI. Keep your humanity.” Download the PDF, print and share the posters, and use them in classrooms, offices, faculty rooms, and other learning spaces. The posters are designed to keep important ideas visible and support dialogue, reflection, and learning-design decisions. Free for classroom and school use; not for resale.

• Display Ten Memorable Learning Ideas
  Put ten concise prompts and ideas where learners and educators can see them in classrooms, offices, faculty rooms, and other learning spaces.
• Download And Print The Posters
  Access the poster collection as a downloadable PDF and print the posters for display in learning spaces.
• Share Posters For Classroom Use
  Use and share the posters in classroom and school settings at no cost. Resale is not permitted.
• Open Conversations About Learning
  Use the visible ideas as starting points for conversations about learning and the purposes behind it.
• Frame Reflection After Shared Learning
  Keep ideas from workshops and planning sessions in view so learning communities can return to them and reflect.
• Reconsider Learning-Design Decisions
  Refer to the posters when considering design choices and the intentions behind a learning experience.

Analog & Authentic: 40 questions to spark Authentic Learning

A printed card deck that helps educators spark authentic learning through prompts for students. Each card pairs a question to ask with a move to try. The deck includes 45 tarot-size cards in a tuck box: a how-to card, four dimension guides, and 40 prompts—ten each for Authentic Self, Authentic Connection, Authentic Experiences, and Authentic Impact. Designed for use without a screen, the deck is coming soon and will be printed to order.

• Spark Questions And Action
  Pair a question for learners with a practical next move, helping educators turn discussion into an action they can adapt to their group.
• Explore Four Learning Dimensions
  Use prompts across Self, Connection, Experiences, and Impact to bring each dimension of authentic learning into student conversations and activities.
• Start Lessons With A Prompt
  Bring a card into a lesson, project, or conversation. Read the question aloud, give learners time before anyone answers, and adapt the suggested move to the group.
• Identify A Dimension To Design For
  Notice which dimension appears least often in classroom draws and use that observation to guide what to design for next.
• Use Prompts Without Screens
  Bring the printed cards into learning settings without requiring a screen. The deck is planned as 45 tarot-size cards in a tuck box and will be printed to order.
• Guide Prompt Use
  Use the included how-to card and four dimension guides to orient educators to the deck and its prompts.

Rhythms & Rituals

Rhythms & Rituals is a downloadable culture guide in development for educators and school leaders. It offers simple, adaptable practices for creating learning communities where people feel connected, known, challenged, and excited to show up. Practices address how a community arrives, connects, works, reflects, celebrates, resets, and departs, helping bring Authentic Self and Authentic Connection into its recurring life while supporting meaningful experience and impact.

• Strengthen Everyday Community Culture
  Use intentional, repeatable practices to shape how a learning community feels and functions in its everyday life.
• Explore Identity And Belonging
  Use prompts about identity and belonging to bring these themes into the recurring life of a learning community.
• Make Feedback And Revision Recurring
  Use feedback and revision rituals to make these practices part of how the community works and learns.
• Reflect On Learning Impact
  Use reflection practices to consider internal and external impact within the learning community.
• Make Learners And Educators Feel Known
  Use learner and educator check-ins to bring attention to the people participating in the learning community.
• Map Community Relationships
  Use relationship mapping to make community connections an intentional part of learning community practice.
• Support Shared Educator Inquiry
  Use shared inquiry practices to make collaborative questioning part of educator teams' work.
• Begin Shared Time With Purpose
  Use arrival practices to make the start of a learning community's shared time more intentional.
• Celebrate Community Experiences
  Use intentional celebration practices within the recurring life of a learning community.
• Reset Shared Community Rhythms
  Use reset practices to shape how a learning community moves through its recurring routines.
• Close Shared Time Intentionally
  Use departure practices to make the close of shared learning time an intentional part of community life.