The interactive companion to the Playbook
This is the Studio the book sends you to. Bring the programme you are actually working on — the one that isn't changing anyone's performance yet — and work it through the same seven instruments the chapters describe. Nothing here is a quiz. Everything here produces something you can take to a sponsor.
The Studio is free to readers of the Playbook, and stays that way.
The bench
All 7 are open. Each one is free, needs no account, and runs entirely in your browser.
A performance-outcome reframe of your own programme
Describe a programme that ran and changed nothing. The diagnostic finds where the objective slipped into attendance language and rewrites it as performance.
Your next project mapped phase by phase
Walk one real project through all five phases, with the performance lens applied at each, and leave with a plan you can hand to a team.
Written and refined performance objectives
Draft objectives in ABCD form, then calibrate the verb against Bloom so the objective states something a supervisor could actually observe.
A root cause analysis report
Six cells, one honest answer: whether the gap you are being asked to train away is a skill problem at all, or information, resources, or incentives.
A criterion-referenced rubric
Build the test before the lesson. Map each objective to the evidence that would prove it, and generate the rubric a reviewer can score against.
A curriculum architecture diagram
Order your objectives by dependency rather than by topic, and export the architecture as a diagram for your design document.
A practice design plan
Match method to objective instead of to habit, and leave with a practice plan that simulates the real performance context.
Your bench record
Each badge is earned by finishing the work in its tool, not by opening it. Progress is kept in this browser only.
Earn all seven badges and a printable plaque appears here, naming the instruments you worked and what you did with each. 7 to go.
Opening soon
One short email per tool as it goes live, and nothing else. Click Notify me on the tool you need most and it gets prioritised.
Your address is stored on this server and used only to tell you when a tool opens. Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe.
Straight answers
Short version: the tools the book names are free, what you write here is yours, and nothing you type trains anything.
The seven tools named in the Playbook are free, with no account required to use them and no trial clock. Paid tiers will only ever cover things the book never promised — later-chapter tools, team seats, and long project history.
What you write in a tool is visible to you alone. It is not published, not shared, and not shown to other readers. Ascender staff do not read it except when you explicitly send it to us for review.
Your inputs and the coaching you receive are never used to train or fine-tune any model, ours or anyone else's. They are processed to answer you, and that is all.
Without an account, your work stays in your own browser and never reaches our server. Create an account only when you want to save a project, come back to it, or export it.
Any saved project can be deleted in one click, and deleting your account removes everything with it. No retention period, no archive copy.
Readers often work with real programmes. If your employer treats a document as confidential, summarise it rather than pasting it. Check your own institution's policy on AI tools before entering identifiable data.
AI-assisted draft. Generated with AI support and not reviewed by a human before you received it. Verify every figure, citation, and claim against your own data, and check it against your institution's policy on AI-assisted work before using it in a deliverable.
Want a working instructional designer to review what the Studio produced before it goes to a sponsor? Ascender will go through your objectives, blueprint, or analysis and return it marked up.
Request a human review
The Studio is the companion to The Performance-Based Training Design Playbook by Dr. Alex Uzokwe — fourteen chapters on designing training that changes what people do. Available in paperback and on Kindle.
Work with Ascender
The book directs enquiries to this portal. Ascender Training Solutions designs performance-based programmes for government, healthcare, extension, academic, and faith-based organisations across North America and West Africa.