Open World Learning Lab / LOCUS
The world is the curriculum. LOCUS is the infrastructure for helping learning accumulate.
World → inquiry → structured journey → evidence → reflection → continuity
Open World Learning Lab (OWLL) is the umbrella research and design lab. LOCUS is the learner-owned adaptive learning system and creator infrastructure developing inside that work. The durable premise is simple: the world is the curriculum. Places, questions, projects, conversations, sources, artifacts, mentors, and lived experience can become structured learning rather than isolated moments.
Independent early-stage education research, design, and prototype work. LOCUS is not yet a validated learning product or production system for minors; educational efficacy, learner-model validity, and broader deployment remain research and testing questions.
What it is
Open World Learning Lab (OWLL) is the umbrella research and design lab. LOCUS is the learner-owned adaptive learning system and creator infrastructure developing inside that work. The durable premise is simple: the world is the curriculum. Places, questions, projects, conversations, sources, artifacts, mentors, and lived experience can become structured learning rather than isolated moments.
LOCUS is intentionally not designed as a generic chatbot or answer engine. The system explores how AI can support a learning process while preserving the work that produces learning: observation, retrieval, explanation, practice, reflection, creation, and human judgment. Its design commitments include learner agency, inspectable learner-model claims, provenance, productive difficulty, scaffolding that recedes, evidence of learning, and continuity across contexts.
The current product architecture has two related surfaces. LOCUS Core is the general learner-owned environment for universal input, pathways, capture, learner memory, and resurfacing. LOCUS Journey Studio is the specialized environment for authored journeys and creator, learner, mentor/orchestrator, and reviewer workflows. Shared contracts allow the two products to evolve together without forcing premature code merging.
The work has moved beyond concept diagrams. Existing prototypes include a runnable LOCUS Core shell, the First Landing State Park journey Water Writes the Landscape, Creator/Learner/Orchestrator/Reviewer surfaces, evidence and Field Note structures, and generalized Creator Beta work. Technical behavior has been tested at the prototype level; meaningful learner outcomes and comparative educational value have not yet been validated. The next frontier is evidence: observing whether a complete LOCUS learning loop creates useful differences for a real learner compared with ordinary general-purpose AI.
Product philosophy
LOCUS should make meaningful learning easier to begin, easier to continue, and harder to lose—without making the learner increasingly dependent on the system. The aim is not more AI-generated output. It is better questions, clearer mental models, stronger articulation, visible evidence, retained agency, and a credible next step for continued learning.
What it demonstrates
- Designing a learning-system architecture grounded in retrieval, scaffolding, reflection, transfer, and evidence
- Translating a long-horizon education thesis into working learner and creator prototypes
- Designing AI boundaries around learner agency, provenance, inspectability, and human judgment
- Building place-based and open-world learning workflows across Creator, Learner, Orchestrator, and Reviewer roles
- Using AI-native product development with explicit contracts, bounded model behavior, testing, and prototype honesty
Role & skills
Role: Founder / Learning Systems Designer / Product Prototyper
Skills
- Learning systems architecture
- Learning science
- Place-based learning
- AI + education
- Learner agency and inspectability
- Evidence-of-learning design
- Creator and learner workflows
- Product prototyping
- Next.js / TypeScript
- AI-native development workflows
Media / assets
Contact Peter
Open to instructional design, learning design, student success, and ed-tech opportunities. Reach out to connect.